PayPal

There are some definite questions around security, cost and many others, but I’m sure they will work through those and come out the other end with a game changing business. Think of the applications in developing worlds, SMEs, borrowing money from friends.

This video explains it pretty well.

Tangent

On a side note, if you like the main dude in that tutorial video, check out another one he’s done for a Twitter app. It’s a refreshing way to explaining technology, go dude!

Hat tip

These gems came via some colleagues at Visual Jazz, Harley Donaldson and Nick Sturgess. Harley is a great source of interesting internets every week with kettlevision.

First Event – LONELY PLANET: a digital journey

Our first event has three speakers from Lonely Planet who will talk about their very open business model and how social media has taken it to the next level.

Hear Gus, Venessa and Johnny chat candidly about Lonely Planet’s social web experiences, from crowd-sourcing of ideas through to user-generated content and fan engagement via social media channels and online promotions.

Event time & date: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 from 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Location: Denmark House, Level 3, 428 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne

Space is limited, so get your RSVP in quick smart RSVP here – at Eventbrite

About Social Media Club Melbourne

Social Media Club Melbourne has been established to educate organisations about Social Media. We’ll be running a series of events throughout the year on various topics that relate to various types of organisations. We hope that these semi-formal events will help build greater understanding of Social Media and create a place for people to build connections.

If you’ve got any ideas for topics, speakers or styles of events that you’d be interested in attending let us know. Post a comment below, on the Facebook wall or send us a message on Twitter.

You can connect with Social Media Club Melbourne (SMCMelb) on Twitter & Facebook

New Media Beers Melbourne

Friday 29th January / 7.00pm
The Cabinet (we’ve reserved the balcony facing Swanson Street)
11 Rainbow Alley (left off Little Collins Street heading to Russel Street) – 03 9654 0915

Please help to tell others, we do have a balcony fully reserved…

If you want to be kept in the loop of future events, join the Facebook group.

ANd for those on Twitter, #NMBMelb
http://twitter.com/#search?q=nmbmelb

UPDATE: Social Media Club Melbourne

SMCMelb are running the first event, full details are here

Back to the point at hand: Can digital agencies LEAD planning & creative?

It’s no new debate, however, I think it’s still unclear how it will all fall. Two opposing articles on AdAge argue for and against the topic.

Jacques-Herve Roubert summarises his views nicely:

Perhaps the synergy and balance between exploitation and exploration is off kilter for digital agencies, but more and more we’re starting to see the agency structure itself change with new hires in technology and social media. And marketers are noticing:

• According to Media magazine, AKQA was named the lead agency for Nike India earlier this year.
• Precor named Ascentium its agency of record in October 2009. According to Forrester’s Q2 2009 Interactive Agency Wave, Ascentium “received the highest client satisfaction scores in this year’s review.” The assignment with Precor includes strategic planning and execution of all offline and online campaigns.
• McAfee hiring Tribal DDB as its agency of record in 2008. This assignment included all TV, print, outdoor, and digital.

Jacques-Herve’s post is in response to the opposing view earlier last year by Ana Andjelic

If digital agencies excel at exploration, traditional agencies thrive on exploitation. A traditional agency is risk-averse, accountable and systematic. It knows its business inside-out. It knows its clients’ businesses and executes campaigns reliably. Its people hang out with the CMOs. A typical traditional agency has decades of experience.

This, too, comes at a cost. A traditional agency, organized around exploitation, ends up doing the same thing over and over again. For every marketing challenge, their solution is “better creativity.” This is not surprising: If an agency spends all its time making sure that everything goes efficiently, that leaves it with little time to experiment. And then, even if it wanted to do things differently, it would be met with its own organizational inertia.

In my opinion they’ve both got valid points, however, having the name Jacques-Herve Roubert makes him sound just that little bit more intelligent.

In all seriousness, I’ve seen media, digital & traditional agencies all work in various magical and wonderful ways together, and sometimes pretty poorly, I believe some traditional agencies will adapt, some digital agencies will become more strategic, media agencies will continue to grow in size and more nimble strategic media agencies will appear on the scene. At the end of the day, the advertiser has a big say in who leads who, sometimes they’ll organise their agencies based on what’s right & logical, sometimes they’ll do it based on what they’ve done before.

You can donate through their website, or install a widget on your blog, forum, facebook page to encourage your mates to help raise funds.

The research also revealed intention to purchase increased by 4.9% following exposure to an online advertising campaign, with brand sentiment increasing by 5.3%.

Display advertising also correlated with a rise in awareness, with top-of-mind awareness jumping 3.1% while prompted awareness increased by 3.5%. The likelihood of a consumer recommending a brand following exposure to an online advertising campaign also increased by 4.4%.

This leads me to 2 main thoughts

1. How does this compare to TV, print & radio? (using the same benchmarks & research approach)

Without context these numbers might be under or over valued as it could smash or be smashed by these other channels? It would be good to put them side by side to see how they interact. And what’s the impact when multiple touch points occur, say TV & Online, does it improve, reduce, increase, change the impact of the communication?

2. More importantly can marketers drop their addiction to clicks?

Clicks, performance & data are both the power and the Achilles heel of digital media. Thanks to many publishers, like Google, you can buy a visitor to your website. This is great because it reduces the risk, it’s not so great because the value of the exposure to media (banner, search result, edm, etc) is missed, all the focus is on the click.

So what?

I recommend clients establish an ROI (return on investment) calculator, where you add up all the outcomes from a campaign and compare it to the cost of the communication. This helps you learn & evaluate performance in a more balanced and reasonable manor. (I’ve explained how to create an ROI calculator here)

One piece of the ROI puzzle should be exposure, it may not be as valuable, but it has to be considered.

This kind of research helps us understand the value, however, we (marketers) need to assign value to it first, both rationally and in our guts.

The basic premise is that you can add up all of the outcomes from a campaign and compare it to the cost of the communication. This helps you learn & evaluate performance in a more balanced and reasonable manor.

The numbers themselves are not particularly meaningful and are arguable, however, the value is when you COMPARE one campaign to another.

Here’s an example of using an ROI calculator

The Apple Co. ran two campaigns at separate times of the year. The goal of an apple company is to sell apples on their website (who’d have thought).

Campaign 1 achieved 10,000 visitors to the website, 200 orders, 12 enquiries & 500 email sign-ups. It cost $50k to run & delivered $13k of value, which equates to an ROI of $0.27.

Campaign 2 achieved 9,000 visitors, 400 orders, 50 enquiries & 500 email sign-ups. It cost $50k to run & delivered $24k of value, which equates to an ROI of $0.49.

Now you can more easily compare the performance of each campaign. Campaign 1 returned $0.27 and campaign 2 returned $0.49, so campaign 2 was nearly twice as effective.

How to create a digital marketing ROI calculator

Step 1. Create the measures

- Visit to your website
- Subscription to email database
- Enquiry
- Online order (or booking, or request)
- New facebook friends

Step 2. Assign values to the measures

For example, a visitor might be $0.10 and an order might be $50. (Or the value of the order might actually be the sale value, or profit margin. Google Analytics can report on this, read their blog here).

Step 3. Track & add the values

Collect all the data, how many visits, orders, enquiries etc and multiply them by the value you assigned in step 2. For example, 500 orders would be 500 X $50 = $2500. (Based on example above). Then add all of these values together, this is your Outcome Value.

Step 4. Divide that value by the cost

If your final outcome value is $2500, then divide that by the media spend, assume it was $4000, that would be $2500 divided by $4000 = $0.62.

Step 5. Compare campaigns

As I mentioned earlier, the ROI value you come up with is kinda meaningless, unless you compare it to other campaigns.

Step 6. Get sophisticated

If you want to take it to the next level, you should have different calculators for different campaign objectives. For example the above is very sales focused, however, your objective might actually be awareness of a new product or service. Have an ‘awareness’ calculator would put more value on the reach & visitors, less on the orders. Then you can fairly compare awareness campaigns separately to conversion campaigns.

Also, you can apply this methodology to each piece of activity, for example, you could compare the ROI of search to the ROI of banner, EDMs or Social Media.

Here’s a template

This template should get you well on your way:  http://www.box.net/shared/i6×105jfil

Although, all that considered, I don’t totally get how they’re launching MySpace Music? Haven’t they been doing music for years?

Are you going?

B&T Today revealed last week that Toyota is running the social media pitch, pitting eight agencies against each other with four agencies then to go head to head with their ideas in the public domain. Following on from this, the two best will produce further work in the new year.

Background

Having worked on the digital account for Holden (held by Visual Jazz) for some time now, I’ve been keeping a close eye on who’s doing what. Interestingly enough, Toyota have recently been putting a lot of effort into Facebook – in particular – buying advertising and growing their fan base.

Toyota

They have also developed an application, called ‘Toyota Promise Forest‘, aligned with the Prius. The concept looks good, one of the best in Australia, however, it doesn’t work – and it hasn’t for quite some time. You’ll see when you use the app that YOUR NAME is TIMOTHY and the friends aren’t my friends, and you can’t actually use the app.

Now we assumed, when we first found the application, that it was new and being repaired, however, it’s been a couple of months now, and still it’s not working.

It makes me wonder why Toyota are ramping up their social media when their current efforts are so broken? That aside, how can you have 5 campaigns in market and effectively measure the performance of each activity separately? Would you run 5 TVCs at once to see which one works best?

Ford

I’ve also heard rumblings that Ford have also just selected an agency to roll out a social media strategy. Whilst at the same time they’ve developed ‘MyFord‘ a social media hub for their brand, however, it’s kinda broken…

Others

Lots of the other auto’s are in the space, but nothing noteworthy at this stage.

Summary: the Australian auto category will be an interesting one to watch in the coming 6-12 months

Who are Channel 101?

The Unavoidable Future of Entertainment

Channel 101 is a monthly screening of 5-minute TV shows. It is a living, autonomous, un-televised TV network, that has been running since 2003. Here, you’ll find exclusive content including behind-the-scenes footage, outtakes, and original 101-based features. For good measure, we’ll put the Prime Time shows up here too.