This year, for the 5^th annual contest, Google tapped Tenthwave to help them process
the entries and streamline the judging. We leveraged our expertise in managing promotions and developing custom digital apps to come up with a winning solution. We cut four days off of the processing time, and assured that the flow of entries never stopped during the judging period (an issue in years past). How did we do it?

Tenthwave paired old-school hand-sorting with a specially-developed digital judging tool. As the entries poured in, we scanned them, coded them and loaded them into Webjudge, our user-friendly online judging tool. Since Google’s judges include employees and celebrity guests from across the country, we made sure each judge could easily browse submissions—from any location at a time during the judging period. Several judges noted that they were very pleased with the tool, which they found easy to use and a great way to get through the entries quickly.

Once the judges selected the 50 finalists (one from each state), those entries were
retrieved and scanned at higher resolution. Google presented these works of art for a public vote, and after millions of votes the winning entry—titled “Pirate Times,” by second grader Dylan Hoffman of Caledonia, WI—appeared on the Google homepage on May 18.

We’re proud to have helped Google crown another winner, who also received a $30,000 scholarship. Our carefully designed entry process and judging tool insured that the enormous volume of entries was processed quickly and hundreds of judges were able to participate in selecting finalists simultaneously.

Can’t wait for next year!

&

present

CPG Marketing in an Evolving Digital World: a panel discussion

Wednesday, May 16^th, 4-5 PM

RSVP to internetweek@tenthwave.com

Join us during Internet Week at the NYC headquarters of Forrester Research (160 5th Avenue, 3rd floor) to discuss the current digital and social marketing environment that requires dynamic and responsive strategies. There is an ever-changing culture of innovation and trial that impacts CPG marketers’ go-to-market strategies.

Discussion topics, informed by recent Forrester Research, include:

• What are the challenges CPG marketers face in getting organizational buy-in or funding for their emerging social and digital media efforts?
• How should marketers aim to integrate their emerging and traditional initiatives into a cohesive cross-channel program?

Participants will have an opportunity to ask questions to the panel at the end of the discussion.

Panel members include:

• Emily Riley, Vice President and Research Director, Interactive Marketing, Forrester Research, Inc.
• Eric Schwamberger, Partner, Tenthwave Digital
• Joen Choe, Marketing Director, Cooper Spirits International (St. Germain) – formerly Sr. Brand Manager at Pernod Ricard (ABSOLUT brand)

Moderator:

• Gunny Scarfo, Strategy Director, Tenthwave Digital

RSVP to internetweek@tenthwave.com by Wednesday at noon to reserve a spot.

Panel Member Bios

Emily Riley, Vice President and Research Director, Interactive Marketing, Forrester Research, Inc.

Emily serves Interactive Marketing Professionals and specializes in advertiser, consumer, and publisher trends and technologies, which includes social marketing, online brand and direct response marketing, targeting, measurement, and response.

Prior to joining Forrester, Emily worked at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, where she helped relaunch its website as an advertising-based content site. Before that, she was at Advertising.com for five years as a delivery analyst. There she was responsible for the delivery and analysis of advertising campaigns across their network of more than 2,500 sites.

Eric Schwamberger, Partner, Tenthwave Digital

Eric provides expertise in Process and Production Management, Interactive Strategy, Digital Relationship Marketing, Website Personalization and e-Commerce. He started Zezza Network in 2005, building an award-winning practice sought by top brands for strategic insight, social media strategy and precise technical development.

Eric has always been on the cutting edge of digital marketing, starting his career at the first interactive marketing agency (Einstein and Sandom) in 1993 where he produced much of the first branded content on the web and closed services like AOL and Prodigy. Eric soon transitioned into leading strategic services and production teams at prominent agencies like Grey and Ogilvy, as well as the interactive focused agency leaders like Eagle River/Agency.com, i33 and IDSociety.

Joen Choe, Marketing Director, Cooper Spirits International (St. Germain) – formerly Sr. Brand Manager at Pernod Ricard (ABSOLUT brand)

Joen has over a decade of experience in brand strategy, across a diverse set of industries and geographies. He currently leads all global marketing efforts for Cooper Spirits, makers of St-Germain elderflower liqueur. He led brand marketing for ABSOLUT VODKA in the United States at Pernod-Ricard USA. At Luxottica North America, he managed the eyewear business for a portfolio of 12 brands, including Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, and Ralph Lauren. He oversaw the triple digit growth of the vitaminwater brand, before and after the Coca-Cola acquisition. In Asia-Pacific, he led the development and expansion of Nike’s lifestyle category and influencer marketing practice. Partnering with Shinsegae, a major Korean retailer, he launched the DIESEL brand in that market. He began his career as a strategy consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, working on corporate strategy for Fortune 100 companies in the IT and telecoms space.

Gunny Scarfo, Director of Strategy, Tenthwave Digital

Gunny Scarfo is Strategy Director at Tenthwave, a full-service digital agency with clients including eBay, Facebook, PayPal, VSP Vision Care, ShurTech, Birds Eye, Duncan Hines, and more.   Previously, he was the head of marketing for Wall Street money manager The Abernathy Group from 2007 to 2010.  Before that, he was managing director at Allentium, a boutique digital agency with clients including The Trump Organization, supermodel Eva Herzigova, The White House, Congressional Leadership of both parties, several luxury real estate clients, and hedge funds managing approximately $1B in assets.

It all started with Instagram, a cool little app that has snagged millions of fans with a disarmingly simple premise: turn user-uploaded pictures into works of art. Its share functions operate across social networks like Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

Enter Mark Zuckerberg, who announced plans to buy the sexy photo-sharing app for a jaw-dropping $1 billion in cash and stock. Said Zuckerberg, “Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.”

That’s a lot of money just to make more people Insta-able. Let’s put this abstract, overwhelming number into perspective.
So: $1,000,000,000 = 1,000,000 x 1,000, right?

Wait, a thousand million? We’d be content with just one (or two!) million. Suddenly, the late great trivia show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire doesn’t seem as appealing.

Instagram is now worth more than:
- The New York Times ($970 million)
- Papa Johns ($914 million)
- Revlon ($900 million)
- Dole Food Company ($866 million)
- Barnes & Noble ($745 million)

Seen another way, the median income in the United States in 2011 fell to $26,364. At that income, if you stored up every penny, nickel, and dime of that median-rate, untaxed income (we wish), it would take you 37,930 years and six months to save a billion dollars.

The app is certainly buzz-worthy. As Mashable noted, “Instagram is a place we go to communicate visually, to give friends a glimpse into our daily life — what we ate for lunch, which shoes we just bought, the view from the window at work. These posts not only fill our friends’ feeds with beautifully filtered photos, but also with artfully masked suggestions and influence.”

But do raves make a photo-sharing app worth $1 billion? We’ve wondered, too. Here’s our take on what makes Instagram valuable to Facebook:

Demand
Fans want it—on every platform. When Instagram was available solely on iOS devices, the demand for it was high. Now, the app is fair game for most photo-sharing seekers. Within 12 hours of the Android release, 1 million+ users installed the app. Sorry, avid Apple fans, but say goodbye to the ‘#iPhoneonly’ hashtag.

Popularity
Apple, no less, voted Instagram “App of the Year” in 2011. If a product is the hottest thing on the market, who isn’t going to want a piece for themselves? That’s how the digital marketplace works—“word of mouth” now means a hot product spreads to millions of fans through social media “likes” and hashtags. Instagram became a big deal in no time.

Less Competition
Instagram is the biggest photo-sharing app on the market, now owned by the biggest social networking site in the world. Sorry, other photo-sharing apps. You lose. And because Facebook’s eager to conquer mobile, less competition is vital.

So congratulations, Instagram. This whole episode just goes to show that you can build something simple, borrow ideas from others, perfect them, make it fun, simple, and shareable, and BAM, you’re worth $1 billion. Just be sure to add the coolest filter. We’re going with Rise or Hefe.

It’s the storytelling element that sometimes gets lost in the barrage of news feeds and hashtags, but building an engaging narrative is one of the most effective ways to cultivate a loyal audience. Joshua Leatherman laments that effective storytelling can be a challenge—and that’s for individual storytellers. Trying to personify a brand can be even more difficult, but when you do the rewards are tremendous. Here are some ways to build an online storyline that everyone wants to read.

1) Use pictures.

By now we’ve all heard about Pinterest, the little social media vehicle that could—and did. It’s an online pinboard of interests, and it’s growing at an astonishing rate. Use this service to map out your likes and interests in a visual format. Tumblr is also a great visual microblogging service. Stories need not be built on words alone.

2) Use a template.

Unsure of how to string your story together? Storify helps you build entire stories, linking bits and pieces of web content and visuals with individual commentary.  For a more DIY approach, try creating a content map with your team.

3) Use humor.

The most memorable stories are often funny. If you don’t happen to be funny yourself (or your brand doesn’t offer a product with much humor attached to it) hand the metaphorical mic to your customers! You can upload videos of your customers to your company’s sites relaying their funny interpretations of your brand. For an added touch, retweet or reblog witty user comments. This practice not only offers much needed engagement, but allows a story to unfold organically.

4) Try transmedia.

Now a popular buzzword with the media crowd, transmedia storytelling is commonly defined as a single narrative that is told through multiple platforms. Although most often reserved for corporations with large budgets, multiplatform storytelling can be scaled down for any user. One easy transmedia trick involves starting a storyline on one social media platform, and then migrating it to another (i.e. begin a series of engaging tasks with your Twitter audience, then incorporate tasks that need to be completed by uploading YouTube videos). This not only expands your social media reach, it gives your brand a chance to measure the impact of a single message across multiple platforms.

Read the full article >> Social media is about social science not technology.

http://socialmediatoday.com/briansolis/469995/social-media-about-social-science-not-technology

We should think about social media and mobile behavior as it’s related to psychology, anthropology, communication, economics, human geography, et al. After all, everything comes down to people. 

Read the full article >> New Pinterest Profile Pages Are Here

http://mashable.com/2012/03/16/new-pinterest-profile-pages/

Pinterest has made good on CEO Ben Silbermann’s promise earlier this week to redesign profiles on the site. The new pages boast a cleaner, more streamlined design that evokes Facebook’s Timeline. 

Read the full article >> Tablet Owners Are Hungry for Paid Content [STUDY]

http://mashable.com/2012/03/16/statistics-abouttablet-owners/

Tablet owners are currently redefining the standard of media consumption — to charge or not to charge. 

Read the full article >> A Code of Conduct for Content Aggregators

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/business/media/guidelines-proposed-for-content-aggregation-online.html?ref=technology

So where is the line between promoting the good work of others and simply lifting it? Naughty aggregation is analogous to pornography: You know it when you see it. 

Read the full article >> ]]> http://www.tenthwave.com/blog/tenthwave-top-5-in-digitalsocial-media-news-%e2%80%93-march-2012/feed/ 0 http://www.tenthwave.com/blog/tenthwave-top-5-in-digitalsocial-media-news-%e2%80%93-march-2012/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Wavelengths/~3/D7YEckMqCLM/ http://www.tenthwave.com/blog/1-tip-for-increasing-your-facebook-content-visibility/#comments Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:25:44 +0000 Matthew Moroni http://www.tenthwave.com/blog/?p=762 Continue reading →]]> Maybe you’re the content guy (or gal) at your office in charge of searching the Internet far and wide for relevant articles, resources, and how-to’s in your field. You pull together pieces of gold that you’re sure will ‘wow’ the masses. You edit, define your points, and post your creation to your Facebook wall. What happens when that golden nugget that you fostered to good health doesn’t get the reaction you were hoping for? How do you ensure that your fans are even going to see what you’ve thrown into the Interwebs?

There are many theories about obtaining success on Facebook, but we declare that the #1 tip for increasing your Facebook content visibility is: Train Your Audience to Watch for Your Content

“You want to make sure you are delivering good content so that your audience won’t want to miss a thing. The best way to do this is to work toward building super fans.” – Social Media Examiner

Consistency, consistency, consistency.

When your fans are used to consistently seeing new content flushed out, they’ll wonder what’s next. If they don’t see something from you when they are used to seeing it, they will seek you out instead. So, give them something to look forward to!

Additionally, here are some ‘best practices’ to make that golden nugget go even further:

1. Post manually:

- Facebook ranks your content higher if you post manually rather than via a third party app like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite.

2. Encourage engagement:

- Ask your fans questions (posts and polls) to encourage quick, concise feedback. One word or a simple phrase will do it.

- When fans interact with your page, respond to them. Let them know that you’re real and authentic.

3. Mix up your content:

- Weekly Polls

- Videos

- Photos

- Relevant links

- Random, entertaining content

4. Mention your Page elsewhere:

- Link to your Page on your website

- Add a link on your blog

- Include in advertising

Next time you’re doing the legwork of putting together that blog or Facebook update, use your creativity and give your fans a piece of content that they’ll want to consume and keep coming back for!

To read more about creating killer content check out these posts:

9 Facebook Marketing Strategies to Build Super Fans – Social Media Examiner

5 Facebook Tips to Increase Your Visibility – Nicky Kriel

Gone are the days when company websites were simply portals for basic information. A vivid brand identity on the web and two-way communication via social media marketing can help your products stay in the minds of consumers long after they’ve shut their laptops for the day. Here are four tips for making your CPG brand memorable enough to attract in-store buyers.

1) Answer their questions.

The hallmark of social media is that it facilitates two-way communication between a potential customer and the brand. This can also be accomplished directly from the company website. There are apps for gathering customer feedback like SuggestionBox and Feedbackify, and you can respond to comments in your company blog. And make sure the links to your company’s social media sites are visible on your main website.

2) Make your website big, beautiful, and functional.

It’s 2012, folks. Your website’s design needs to reflect the current era. Broken links integrated into outdated content and copy is not only unprofessional, but can drive consumers away. You need to make sure that your website remains competitive against the slew of other commercial sites that customers peruse on a daily basis. For best results, incorporate the element of fun into your site via great design and catchy content.

3) Create and maintain companion social media sites.

Facebook and Twitter aren’t just for keeping in touch with friends. Along with Tumblr and Pinterest, they are extensions of your main website, and hubs for attracting and communicating with potential customers who may not be familiar with your product. If your company is large enough, it may be wise to hire internal talent for the sole purpose of handling your social media accounts, or else contracting an agency to do the same. It takes time, patience, and meticulous attention to detail to upkeep a consistent brand message across all participating platforms.

4) Create a company blog.

Blogging, like e-mail and AIM, is fad-proof. It’s one facet of Internet culture that has been around since the beginning and still manages to remain powerful.  As social media pages are now an addendum to effective websites, CPG websites should maintain up-to-date blogs. This content should be informative, personal and concise. Short blog posts in the area of 300-500 words should include material about your product and topics that are similarly related to your company’s area of expertise. Great blog content also has the potential to go viral.

What is your brand doing to be digitally memorable?

Then came Twitter, which confined sharing to 140 characters and coined the term “micro-blogging,” a concept popularized by the ubiquity of smartphones. Instagram introduced text-free sharing, turning anyone with an iPhone into a share-happy photographer. Sharing content has become virtually synonymous with creating it.

The simpler/quicker trend has now led to this: “frictionless sharing.” For those who use Facebook apps like the Washington Post Social Reader and Spotify, you know how it works. For those who haven’t, frictionless sharing is when the use of an app automatically triggers sharing. That means the act of reading an article from the Washington Post will automatically appear publicly on your Timeline—no “share” button necessary. As soon as you start listening to a track on Spotify, it gets listed on your Timeline without further action.

Is this a good thing? The debate is raging. Even within the offices of Tenthwave, there are passionate opinions on whether the path of least resistance in sharing is the right one. We decided to ask two people in our Social Media department to offer their thoughts.

Sam Berko

Some people love frictionless sharing because it helps them discover new music by seeing who is listening to what right now. But others don’t like the feature because of the risks and “social noise” it produces, and I can understand why. When every article you read and every song you listen to is made public, you have zero privacy. Your boss might see that you’ve just read an article on effective resume writing. Your mother may call you demanding to know why you’re listening to violent rap music. You’re forced to censor the media you consume to keep your persona intact. A hardcore metal rocker may have some explaining to do when his fans see that he’s halfway through a Justin Bieber listening party.

Frictionless sharing also buries you in a deluge of news feed items about every little thing your friends are reading and listening to. Every time an article surfaces with new Kim Kardashian photos, Facebook will let you know when your friends read it (don’t be tempted to take a peek if this will hurt your street cred.) You will also be reminded how stale your friends’ tastes in music are when Facebook tells you who’s listening to Now That’s What I Call Music 40 again. We’re already bombarded enough as it is. Frictionless sharing unleashes a new stream of unwanted noise whenever you log in to your profile.

Jaime Hoerbelt

Frictionless sharing is obviously a wonderful thing for marketers and advertisers. For marketers, it increases the likelihood of happenstance—someone stumbling upon the brand or the brand’s content. Anyone who has ever run a social media promotion with the hope that it will go “viral” has a huge reason to LOVE frictionless sharing. It is a rare thing for a user to come to a promotion and enjoy it so much that they are willing dig around on the page until they find the Facebook send button, Tweet button or, dare I say, email button. With frictionless sharing, just the act of entering and clicking around could potentially publish stories on the user’s behalf. This makes it more likely that people will see more stories about your brand.

For advertisers, it creates a slew of new targeting options. Not only can they target people who “like” Alicia Keys but they can also target people who listened to Alicia Keys in the last month. It takes major guesswork out of who is actually a true fan of anything.

What many of the critics don’t mention is that frictionless sharing is good thing for the average consumer as well. People already share what they like and discover new things through their friends online and offline. This just makes online social discovery more seamless, more accessible, and more immediate. That’s a win for everyone looking to buy a new toaster oven, to listen to a new band or to try a new restaurant.

Now that you’ve read our opinions, what are yours? Are you for or against frictionless sharing in your personal life? Does your opinion change when you put your marketer cap on?

1. Online Ad Spending Surpasses Print for First Time in 2012

For the first time in U.S. history, marketers are projected to spend more on online advertising than on advertising in print magazines and newspapers.

Read the full article »

2. Why Pinterest is 2012′s Hottest Website

Pinterest is the breakout social network of 2012, but even technology addicts could be excused for missing its rise to success.

Read the full article »

3. How Facebook Comments impact Google search rankings

Google’s November 2011 changes to its web crawler have created new opportunities and liabilities for all websites implementing Facebook Comments, with important implications for SEO.

Read the full article »

4. The Rise of Social Marketing [Infographic]

According to the Content Marketing Institute, Content is one of the fastest growing segments in Marketing and an increasing number of marketers are relying more and more on their strategies to achieve success online.

Read the full article »

5. 10 Essential Features of Every Good Business Website

Web design can be an overwhelming process, so we’ve spoken to a few web designers who told us what you need to have on your site … and what you can probably do without.

Read the full article »

One answer: Many brands have fumbled when it comes to creating compelling QR code-driven campaigns, implementing the technology without understanding how to use it.  Most QR campaigns, argues Dave Wieneke of AdAge, have been, “tossed like digital spaghetti against a wall in hopes that some of it will stick, or click, to an ad.”  These underdeveloped strategies and campaigns have helped turn off the over 20 million U.S. adults who have scanned a QR code from doing so again in the future.

That’s too bad, because QR codes offer tremendous marketing potential. They just have to be leveraged wisely. Tenthwave launched the first North American QR code campaign for Jim Beam in 2008, and we’ve learned the key steps to consider when creating a QR code campaign:

1. Provide a strong call to action before the scan
2. Simplify the user experience
3. Make the payoff worth the scan
4. Understand your audience
5. Set achievable goals, then optimize for success

Here are a few case studies that demonstrate the possibilities and the pitfalls of QR code strategy. We hate to pick on any brands, but their lessons are valuable:

JetBlue: Right program, wrong venue

In 2011, JetBlue ran a QR code campaign in subway trains and stations all over New York City.  With the incentive to win a free vacation, JetBlue urged passersby to either scan a QR code or register through a website for entry. Great idea: tempting harried commuters with a chance to escape. Not-so-great idea: placing the ads in one of the few places in NYC that blocks out all cellular service.  Lesson learned: Even tech-savvy brands like JetBlue struggle with QR codes, but they have acknowledged the shortcomings of their prior programs and are planning on re-launching a revised campaign in the future.

Lupe Fiasco: Look up…and get annoyed!

not a show tonight. just want you see something special like in union square, nyc last week #lasers

— Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) February 11, 2011

To promote his album Lasers, hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco tweeted to his followers to go to Union Square to “look up in the sky.” Hundreds of fans arrived, eager for a unique experience from one of their favorite artists. They were greeted with a QR code projected on the side of a building. Great idea: Targeting an influential group of fans to create a potentially viral engagement. Not-so-great idea: Disappointing fans with a minimal payoff for their mobilization. The QR code only linked to a mobile site where fans could pre-order the album. While Lupe was able to engage a highly motivated audience of mostly millennials, he failed to understanding that they were expecting more than a weak publicity stunt. His fans immediately took to Twitter and Facebook to express their outrage. Lesson learned: When he staged a similar stunt in Los Angeles, Lupe offered free t-shirts as an incentive and made it clear that he would not be performing that night.

Macy’s: A gentle push with big results

Last spring, Macy’s Backstage Pass campaign utilized QR codes to deliver behind-the-scene videos with Macy’s celebrity spokespeople discussing fashion and pop culture. Great idea: Aware that the majority of their shoppers would be unfamiliar with the technology, ads and posters emphasized the benefits through television spots and informative CTAs.  Even-greater idea: Macy’s set modest goals, which allowed them to quadruple their expected target metrics. After analyzing the metrics, Macy’s re-launched the campaign in the fall with optimized content and a sweepstakes that tripled the previous campaign’s response rates. Lesson learned: Knowing your audience and tailoring your program to their comfort level—and your own—will insure success.

QR codes should be as carefully considered as any element of a marketing strategy. They can be leveraged as a low-cost, low-risk extension to existing programs—an additional medium through which you can engage users in small-scale, interesting, and unique ways.  Mark Donovan, SVP of mobile at comScore, puts it best: “QR codes demonstrate just one of the ways in which mobile marketing can effectively be integrated…understanding which consumer segments scan QR codes, the source and location of these scans, and the resulting information delivered, is crucial in developing and deploying campaigns that successfully utilize QR codes to further brand engagement.”  As the mobile market continues to skyrocket, it’s important that marketers leverage the technology wisely—and avoid the trail of QR gaffes.

So what do you all think? What do you think it will take for brands and consumers to embrace QR codes?