Catch Up Lady

Stream 2009: After the One Night Stand

Kaitlyn Wilkins — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:56:04 -0400

At Stream, I helped facilitate a great session with Jory Des Jardins (co-founder of BlogHer) and Christine Cea (Director of Brand PR, Unilever) entitled After the One Night Stand – How To Get Beyond Buzz and Create Sustained WOM Programs. Our session focused on this challenge from three perspectives: the agency, the client, and the partner.

Getting Beyond the Campaign Think One of the biggest challenges in creating sustained WOM programs is that budgets and mindsets are locked into campaign cycles. This mentality is not conducive to social media programs, which are centered around creating a long-term, open ended dialogue with online stakeholders. While some WOM programs are specifically designed for short-term deployment, many others stop simply because the campaign the social media effort was attached to ended. Unilever has broken out of this with respect to social media by creating a taskforce that provides leadership and oversight for all social media efforts across brands. Many other companies have started hiring in-house social media experts who serve a similar purpose. On the agency side, we discussed selling the program you want to execute for your client. While you may be planning for a campaign that occurs over a finite period of time - build in a budget to maintain the relationship.

Organizational Structure

At present, few companies are set up internally to handle the "soft costs" associated with a sustained WOM campaign - from running a Twitter handle, to playing a community manager role. The ideal solution for brands at the moment is to have their agencies transparently assist in co-managing these aspects of the campaign, and, through trainings, help brands create internal capacity that can take on more of these responsibilities in the long term.

Understanding Audience Behavior and Partner Advantages

Rooting your WOM program in robust audience and partner research is another key ingredient in creating sustained programs. On the research side, understanding your target audiences online behaviors helps you craft a program they will want to engage with continuously. Choosing the right partner can afford you a deeper level of community understanding - as they are intimately familiar with not only metrics on their audience, but also smaller nuances that can help make your campaign a long-term success.

Optimizing a Program for the Long Haul

What works in Month 1, might not work in month 6 - so planning a program that evolves is key. There are two ways to make sure you're ready. The first is laying out a value exchange - understand what a brand can do for the campaign/influencers, and what the campaign/influencers can do for the brand over the long term. Make sure your value exchange is solid, and offers value as time goes by. Building on that concept, optimization is the second key. Don't build a cathedral and walk away - make sure the agency and the brand are involved in week to week fine tuning that ensures the campaign stays strong and meets needs.

Demonstrating Value Through Measurement

And what would our discussion have been without a long conversation on measurement?? All present agreed that measurement, and demonstrating the long term value of social media was integral to creating sustained WOM programs. I shared Ogilvy's Conversation Impact measurement model, which maps to the marketing funnel and focuses on metrics like reach (that tie out to existing marcom efforts), as well as engagement and action - which is where WOM programs can uniquely add value. Additionally, integrating social media measurement into brand's existing measurement reports helps demonstrate where social is adding value and can help make the case for longer-term planning and execution.

What are other obstacles to creating sustained WOM Programs, and how can collectively overcome them?

I Fell In Love At the Apple Store: R&B meets Technology!

Kaitlyn Wilkins — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 04:30:51 -0400

There's nothing not to like about this rap, home made at the Apple store on 5th Ave in NYC. Not only is the song "catchy as hell" according to Gizmodo, but it combines two of my favorite things - atrocious R&B and technology. Hells yes!

The song was recorded by FattySpins on one of the demo MacBooks at the store. He freely admits there appears to be a "homeless giant" standing behind him in the YouTube description, and defends himself against green screen accusations by posting the rough cut and stating, "If you're wondering why the other people in the store hardly turned around, then you've obviously never been to New York."

HT to Catch Up Bro for this find.

Stream 2009: The Myth of the Viral

Kaitlyn Wilkins — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 04:14:05 -0400

I was fortunate enough to spend the last few days at WPP's annual Stream Conference - which brings together some of the brightest minds from around the network in an unconference format to discuss the what's next in digital and technology communications. Some of the best sessions I attended were the ones organized around lists - be it potential "truths" presented for discussion, or co-created outputs. One such session was The Myth of the Viral presented by YouTube.

“Viral success happens, but it doesn’t just ‘happen’”.

Myth 1: I don’t have to promote it

The most successful videos are rooted in smart creative and promotion. Videos need a robust syndication and promotion plan that incorporates elements such as video ads, brand integration on .coms, influencer outreach, and social networking plays.

I think this is the most frequently overlooked aspect of video - today YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the US, so the Field of Dreams approach to posting your content is definitely not enough. Any time you want scale in social (and who doesn't?!), a promotion plan - often rooted in paid media - is a must.

Myth 2: I can just put a video on YouTube and users will find it

Naming, tagging, and engaging content people spend time with all help you index on YouTube. To stand out you have to understand search terms that people use, and search optimize against those words.

Search is IT - for video and anything a brand puts on the web - 80% of web sessions start at a search engine, and 91% of Internet users search daily. Search intent modeling is now essential to everything from SEM/SEO to messaging to consumer behavior research to tagging.

Myth 3: Consumers don’t like branded content

Branding is ok if it’s tasteful and appropriate to the content – stripping the brand out, or having all UGC content is not necessary. Examples: Samsung Omnia i900 Unboxing, riffing on the unboxing video trend (3MM views), or my favorite Smirnoff Raw Tea Partay (5MM views).

Consumers are accustomed to contextually appropriate branding - as long as your adding value (humor, knowledge, exclusivity...) you can "get away" with branding that delivers on your messaging in a subtle way.

Myth 4: It’s not just about one video

Come up with ideas that people can replicate easily, so that viewers feel empowered to create additional content in response to the original piece. If you’re smart, you can build an ecosystem around your content.

This was a really smart point - think of things like the Cadbury Gorilla, which spawned so many spinoffs that Cadbury at one point set up a shadow site to house them. Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

Myth 5: Being in control is a good thing

Take advantage of your accidental spokespeople who are creating content without the brands “permissions." For example, McDonald’s has leveraged a UGC McNuggets rap in advertising, and UK’s Cillit took advantage of a popular UGC techno remix of one of their commercials. Another common YouTube fear is the inane comments that are often left on videos, the discussion group felt that brands need to have tolerance for the YouTube community and the good/bad comments – and be confident that silly or unnecessarily disparaging remarks are often shouted down.

Ahhhh, control! The age old question. One of the best arguments against leaving your head in the sand is that, in many cases, consumers are *already* appropriating your brand in some way. Listening to the conversation gives you more control and a platform to start a dialogue that could be leveraged proactively or reactively in the future. One of the best examples of nimbly reacting to video content was how Chris Brown and Sony responded to the JK Wedding Dance video, in which a couple danced down the aisle to Brown's "Forever." Instead of wigging out, Sony Music used ContentID to claim the audio content and opted to put music purchase buttons next to the video and use YouTube insights to examine a new demographic and "come up with new distribution, sales and marketing ideas." Sales of the song jumped from 3,000 to 50,000 in one week in July.

5 Things You Need to Know About Social Media in Mexico

Kaitlyn Wilkins — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:44:23 -0400

Last night I returned from a whirlwind trip to Ogilvy in Mexico City, where I was lucky enough to conduct a day long training session for 15 of the office’s most social media savvy staff. Having the opportunity to broaden my horizons beyond the US, and look at social through a more global lens was invaluable. Below are FIVE key insights I picked up from my research, and great discussions I had with my Ogilvy team members and Jesus Hoyas (President of the Social Media Club – Mexico City):

1. Internet Penetration in Mexico is Growing Rapidly Internet penetration in Mexico is hovering between 25 – 30%. This rate that is low compared to many Asian and European countries, and while it trails a few other LATM countries (notably Brazil, Colombia and Argentina) percentage wise, Mexico is in fact second only to Brazil in terms of sheer number of people online (111,000,000+). Internet penetration will continue to grow at a rapid pace in Mexico. Stats on LATM internet penetration can be found here.

2. Social Media Adoption is STRONG and Driven by Young Influencers Internet growth is lead by Mexico’s youth - 48% of all Internet users in Mexico are 15 – 24, compared with 35% in Latin America, and 26% worldwide (ComScore State of Internet Report – Mexico, 2009). So, it’s no surprise that early adopters/heavy Internet users in Mexico are using social platforms at a rate higher than most countries in the world – beating worldwide averages for time spent online a month (Ibid).

(Stats from Universal McCann Wave 3)
While the general population is inverted – using social at rates lower than most other large countries globally, these young early adopters represent the future of social media in Mexico. These are the trendsetters who are leading their lives online – for an increasing number of people in Mexico to see – and they will be the influencers of tomorrow.

3. Online Affinity Groups are Slow to Form – “Personal” Use Dominates in Social That being said, groups of online influencers organized around affinity groups have yet to truly emerge in Mexico. Unlike the online scene in the US (which is segmented out by Mom Bloggers, Food Bloggers, Tech Bloggers, Bloggers Who Have Red Hair, Ride Horses and Live Within 30 minutes of a Stateline, etc, etc, etc,) Mexico’s social media universe has not matured to the point of fragmentation. I discussed this with Ogilvy’s Gonzalo Fragoso, author of the popular Yo No Quiero Blog, who confirmed that many of the “biggest” bloggers in Mexico are using blogs for what they were originally intended – personal online journals – versus a platform for membership in a larger affinity group. Now, that doesn’t mean that Mexican’s aren’t interested in niche content – in fact many people I talked to note that when they are looking for specific blog content they turn to US sites, or Spanish language blogs from elsewhere in LATM and Europe. This has obvious implications for the types of social media campaigns one would create in Mexico at present, and it will be interesting to watch the space evolve vis-à-vis “special interest” influencers.

4. Digital Spends are Small, and Social Media Spend is Smaller Experts I spoke with approximate that 5% of budgets are going to digital – owning to Mexico’s Internet penetration, and the low-cost of advertising on television. Brands in Mexico run the gamut from those with no familiarity with social, to those who are getting ready to experiment. Among those experimenting, most all campaigns are channel focused (a Twitter account, a Facebook page…) and are rarely tied to a broader, ongoing social media strategy. This is something we still struggle to overcome in the US – and like here, the answer is education and internal trainings for clients, and seriously demonstrating the ROI of pilot social media programs in order to sell in more sustained, strategy driven campaigns.

5. Ogilvy Mexico is Ready to Go! I was super impressed with the team we have down in Mexico City – the 15 or so that I trained were all heavy social media users themselves, and extremely eager to apply their enthusiasm and creativity to client work. We’re lucky to have these guys on our global team, and I can’t wait to see what comes next for them.

Twitteleh - Twitter for ANY Mother

Kaitlyn Wilkins — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:15:06 -0400

Watch this great satirical video from Mashable highlighting Twitteleh, "Twitter for Your Jewish Mother". Twitteleh revolves around three simple questions:

1) Where are you?
2) What have you eaten?
3) Are you wearing a sweater?

With a few variations this could easily be applied to my shiksa life - the three questions would be:

1) What city are you in?
2) Will you make sure you call me when you get home?
3) Have you talked to your brother?

Mom, what am I missing?

Why I Love Working with Social Media Smart Asses

Kaitlyn Wilkins — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:58:59 -0400

10thflrvending is not to be confused with its rival, 10thflrcandydish.

Kanye's Jack Ass-itry Goes Viral

Kaitlyn Wilkins — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:47:30 -0400

One thing I love about social media is how quickly it can be mobilized to mock and tear down idiotic celebrities.

Let's take Kanye West, who has clearly been attending the Joaquin Phoenix School of Bizarre Behavior based on his antics at the VMAs, and subsequent breakdown on Jay Leno. In less that 24 hours we have Kanye Memes galore.

(Check out a bottomless trove of Kanye interruption photos here: http://kanyegate.tumblr.com. HT @unterekless)

The clever satirical output surrounding the Kanye meltdown meme almost makes me forget the outpouring of unbelievably stupid Tweets on the subject. Almost.

Send me any other great Kanye riffs and I'll post here.

What Rockstars Can Teach You About Social Media

Kaitlyn Wilkins — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:39:32 -0400

Great presentation from Mack Collier, with some really rad* visuals.

* I'm bringing rad back. Deal with it.

What Rockstars Can Teach You About Kicking Ass With Social Media

View more presentations from Mack Collier.

Shit My Dad Says

Kaitlyn Wilkins — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:51:13 -0400

Props to my mom for sending this gem my way. Shit My Dad Says is a Twitter handle authored by 28-year old Justin who lives at home with his 78-year old father. The handle is solely dedicated to transmitting pearls of ... wisdom (?)... from Justin's dad.

Shit My Dad Says has over 150,000 followers - and is only following LeVar Burton back. Which I find even more hilarious than the concept itself.

My Mom could definitely have a Twitter feed dedicated to her one liners. One of my faves: "How do you tell the difference between baking soda and powdered sugar? Taste it, if it tastes like shit it's baking soda." I wonder if @ShitMyMomSays is taken yet...

Posterous – Filling the Informal Void

Kaitlyn Wilkins — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:35:02 -0400

I’ve been on Facebook since 2003. I’ve been blogging since 2006. I got on Twitter in 2007. Generally speaking, I didn’t believe there was room in my life (or my attention span) for another platform. Enter Posterous.

(Graphic via Fast Company)

In their own words, “Posterous is the dead simple way to put anything online using email.” You email content (a link, text, photo, video, even MP3) to your email address at Posterous and it automatically posts it to your Posterous site – as well as over a dozen other social media platforms that you specify.

From a technical standpoint, Posterous is a huge asset to any heavy social media user. Forget one off apps that cross post your Tweets on Facebook. Posterous does that and way, way more – removing the human syndication lift that we all did day in/day out.

From an editorial standpoint, Posterous fills a gap we didn’t even realize existed. Twitter thrived because it helped facilitate personal, microinteractions – reinforcing, rather than competing with, long form blogging. Posterous fits nicely in the middle, as Guy Kawasaki said on his Posterous “Holy Kaw!” it’s, "For everything that's slightly less than a blog post but slightly more than a tweet."

From a “that’s so simple I can’t believe no one’s done it like that yet” standpoint the email link up is genius. Email is still the fundamental way we communicate and underpinning of most of our devices. You may not always be able to access your blogging app, or hop online to craft a post, but 99.99% of the time you have something with you that lets you send a simple email.

While some (in the social media space at least) people’s Posterous blogs look suspiciously like their normal blogs, many I found were much more personal glimpses into the author’s life. Videocasts with children, photos snapped on vacation, coupled with the occasional too short for blog/too long for Twitter industry thoughts or findings. With blogs the go to for long-form thought leadership, Twitter increasingly becoming a brand/personality building platform, and Facebook remaining a walled garden Posterous fills an informal void. It's a life cast tool we didn't even know we wanted.

Personally, I’ve taken the informality to the max and decided to use Posterous as a digital scrapbook of my vacations and travels. This use will allow me to literally capture a moment complete with a photo and my thoughts and feelings at that exact time. I probably won’t use Posterous to its fullest extent with respect to syndication (do all my Twitter followers need to see a picture of me eating a lobster on Martha’s Vineyard?), but it will allow me to cater to an underserved audience (my non-geeked out friends and family) while easily creating a real time archive of my adventures that I can cross-post as needed.

Posterous is simple enough that anyone publishing or participating on more than one platform should climb aboard.

This post was originally written for Ogilvy PR's Fresh Influence blog.