A good piece of creative might be the single most important thing that affects the outcome of your digital advertising campaign. This has been well-known for many years, but research now backs this up and shows that ads with good creative perform significantly better.

A recent study by comScore shows that creative execution had four times the impact of the media plan on overall campaign results. The research firm analysed the results of 396 online campaigns and found that creative execution accounted for 52 percent of the results, while the media plan was responsible for 13 percent and other contributors accounted for 35 percent.  

Bad creative can also have an adverse effect on the results of a branding campaign. A new mobile study by Dynamic Logic found that the best creative can boost brand favourability and intent to purchase, while bad creative has the opposite effect.

Dynamic Logic surveyed users who viewed mobile ads and compared their results to a control group of users who were not exposed to these ads. According to the analysis, the brand favourability of users who were exposed to an average creative execution was 3.9% higher than for users who were exposed to none. Brand favourability was 14.5% higher with the best creative executions. However, the worst creative execution actually reduced brand favorability by 4.9%. For intent to purchase, results were similar. The average creative execution boosted intent to purchase by 4.7%, the best creative boosted it by 16.3%, and worst creative decreased intent to purchase by 4%.

These two studies lend weight to the notion that when launching a new campaign, significant resources, energy and attention should be given to the creative execution to achieve best results. Here are six examples of advertisers and agencies that have done just that. They have focused on creative execution to deliver ads that have shaken the known boundaries of display advertising.

Inception glider

Launching a successful home entertainment DVD campaign can be challenging. Much of your target audience has already seen the movie or the movie trailer. Therefore, DVD launch campaigns need to emphasise the DVD’s extra features, such as cut scenes or interviews with the creators and actors. This will not only further entice viewers and fans but also create a powerful experience and generate interest for the DVD release, given the right promotional ad.

Warner Brothers Home Video did this for the launch of the Blu-ray and DVD release of Inception. It wanted a high-impact stunt to drive awareness so challenged CBS Interactive to produce an ad experience that mimicked the movie’s fast pace and space and time manipulations. The ad ran on GameSpot’s homepage. Using the glider ad format, the site falls back toward the user to reveal a user-initiated video.

Concurring with the Nielsen and comScore studies that great creative delivers great results, this ad exceeded the benchmarks. Dwell rate, a metric linked to high brand effectiveness and measures mouse movement over an ad, was 268% above the benchmark. Click-through rate was 247% above the benchmark.

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Specsavers ad and takeover

Since users are already used to the location of the mid-page unit in relation to the publisher’s content, advertisers are presented with the challenge of breaking the standard mould and delivering a message outside the typical banner that grabs immediate attention. Therefore, advertisers need to apply out-of-the-box thinking – literally.

Specsavers’ latest ad does just that. The astronaut featured on the ad loses his glasses in the spaceship, and they start floating all over the homepage while he tries to catch them. It’s an instant attention grabber, immediately luring the user’s eyes toward the ad (and the Specsaver glasses).

Once you follow the call to action and click on the ad, as higher numbers of users do given the quality of the creative, it opens to a full homepage takeover designed as the control room of a spaceship. In the middle of the spaceship’s dashboard the Specsavers ad video features.

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Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood video

Interactive video takes engagement a step further by enticing users to participate. The combination of touch and video can significantly increase retention.

This ad for Ubisoft’s game Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood provides a great example. A YouTube homepage takeover that takes video to another level, the ad starts as the assassin runs through the constantly changing YouTube homepage. The scene focuses on various parts of the homepage, as the assassin races through. When the video stops, the user has to click on an item inside the movie that the assassin can use to fight its rival. This all happens at a rapid pace, almost immersing the user within the game. It’s exactly what any advertiser wants from a fast-paced, engaging video.

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White Collar iPad demo

Tablets are snatching more market share of users’ browsing time, opening up great opportunities for advertisers. Specifically, the ability to touch an ad with your fingertips rather than the mouse creates added intimacy and a significantly better user experience.

This ad for a popular USA Network show White Collar lets users help solve crime and take part in the show. This interactive iPad demo lets you scan The New York Times for clues on how to break the criminal cypher to unlock bonus video footage from the upcoming season. Users simply move the iPad image with their fingertips.This ad used HTML5 to deliver a highly engaging and interactive ad that proved a match to any Flash-based ad.

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Gas Natural Fenosa interactive game

Who said that utilities ads have to be boring? Just sprinkle a little imagination, whisk in some creativity, add an interactive game, and voilà — a fun ad. This is what Gas Natural Fenosa, a utilities provider in Spain, did when it wanted to promote its brand.

The ad is an interactive game in which users have to flip an omelet without letting it splat on the floor. The game increases engagement and lets users explore the brand in a creative way by cleverly using natural gas as a necessary means to fry an omelet. Better still, no one has to clean up afterwards.

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Mass Effect 2 interactive video

Another good use of interactive video is to allow users to explore huge quantities of information about a product. Users can touch different parts of the video and get additional explanations on them. This way, all users can watch the standard video, while users who show more interest can view more content and information.

This is what Electronic Arts did with the launch of the game Mass Effect 2. Once the user expands the banner, he views a 10-second introduction video. Once this introduction video ends, the user can click on each of the characters and hear quick introductions about them and their roles in the game. In addition, using a mouse, users can switch between videos and areas in the game. This ad is a fun game by itself.

These ad examples show how effective digital advertising can be when advertisers let creativity take centre stage in the banner. It makes a strong argument for any advertiser embarking on a new digital campaign to spend time thinking through their creative as better creative delivers better results. As all of these advertisers know.

This is exactly what a group of recently laid off employees of Omnicom Group’s Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GSP) did after losing their jobs in a recent round of cuts made by the ad agency.

GSP reportedly laid off as many as 200 of its 700 staff this month after losing key accounts Sprint and Hewlett Packard.

GrabsomeGoodby.com, which was created by J.D. Beebe, encourages the laid-off workers to advertise their experience to agencies and recruiters, as well as providing a portal for companies to load job openings.

It describes itself as a “tribute to the talented folks at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners who were affected by the latest layoffs. It was created to act as a directory of those people who are now available to do work for you. So peruse, contact and help turn this situation into a positive thing. Getting some Goodby at your agency is a great thing.”

And the tag line is poetic: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you Goodby talent, hire it to make your lemonade better.”

Staff are listed on the site under their areas of expertise which range from account management and strategy to creative and production. At time of publishing the site had 1072 likes on Facebook.

The social web, and platforms like Facebook and Twitter in particular, allow brands to develop relationships with their customers in way that has never existed before. Customer loyalty has always been recognised as incredibly important but developing metrics around more than swiping a card at the point of purchase has been hard. Now it’s not. With a well designed and executed social media strategy companies can now identify and reward their most loyal and vocal customers: the brand evangelists who actively encourage others to purchase from their favourite brand.

The companies that are doing this the best are the ones who understand that they need to create a relationship with each customer – they need to recognise that each customer is unique and reward people for interacting with them. Customers now have more power to voice an opinion than ever before, and they will do it whether you are participating or not. It is no longer good enough to simply treat customers as something to convert into a sale then move on. ‘Speed dating’ is out and romancing to find out ‘what makes them tick’ is in.

The brilliant people who work at Facebook understand this better than most. In fact, they have recently changed the way that advertising works within Facebook to incentivise brands to be more active and engaging. Facebook knows that the real value from their platform comes from the engagement that creates longer term relationships. And they are now changing the game within Facebook so everybody else gets that too. It is likely that the recent changes to the Facebook platform will be games changers for some brands. Others, such as the ones who have been looking at social media as simply a broadcast platform, are going to struggle. What is certain is that Facebook’s advertising revenue is set to make another giant jump as the more engaging brands will be paying less to spread their message through the platform.

As a marketer you have many choices about how you treat your audience. You can develop techniques that let you know who they are and how they wish to be communicated with and you can engage them in creative interesting ways, creating long term relationships. Or you can look at the customers as numbers to be churned through quickly. We all know that being treated as an individual is more effective, and now it seems there is going to be an additional financial benefit to it.

So you can view the social web as a place where people waste time and generate low value. But it is up to you, as a marketer, to change the way your customers interact with you. Social media is fast paced and there can be a lot of distractions. To really stand out you need to create meaningful experiences – ones that can turn into happy long term relationships.

On that note, we bring you this instalment of Marketing‘s Top10 – the strangest beer commercials we could find:

10. Japanese beer for kids

This one is last because it’s not actually beer – but it is a drink coloured, packaged and promoted to resemble beer, marketed to kids. Kampai!

If you can’t see the videos below, please refresh this page

9. Bud Light 

Not as strange in content as some of the others, the weirdness here is wondering why Bud wanted the audience to associate the smell of burning horse gas with their beverage.

8. Heileman’s Old Style Lager

Even the ad is old style… because it is, well, old. Heileman’s tastes better because it’s aged longer, just like this ad. At the time it was made we’re sure this ad wouldn’t have been quite so remarkable, but if we saw this ad for a beer today, we’d probably buy some.

7. Bluetounge Brewery whale safe beer

SERIOUS WARNING: This ad was a joint venture with a Sea Shepherd anti-whaling campaign about 5 years ago. It’s racist, and very graphic. And has nothing to do with beer until the end.

6. WTF Irish beer commercial

We use all the words in the heading very, very loosely. Except the WTF part. That couldn’t be more accurate. Marketing couldn’t get to the end of this 3 minute 15 second ‘video’ (how would you describe it?). So many things to comment on in this one, I think we’ll call out the horrible Irish/Scottish/Dutch accent for a special mention.

5. Toohey’s strange harvest

A local entrant, you may remember this Tooheys Extra Dry campaign from a few years back. The attempts at psychological analysis of this spot, as well as the sheer confused frustration in the comments make entertaining reading if you have the time.

4. Van Damme promotes Coors Light

Come for the tight jeans, stay for the line: ‘My nipples were so cold they started talking to me.”

3. Wildeman

If you don’t like seeing fake blood or dead animals, perhaps skip this one. As for a review, we like this appraisal from the comments: “Stick George Orwell, Rammstein, Braveheart, Robin Hood and Beowulf into a blender and blend until it sucks like a KFC milkshake. Doesn’t make me thirsty or remember the beer. Sorry.”

2. Fernet Stock
Not only weird, but incredibly offensive to women – the beer double whammy!

1. Arnold Schwarzenegger saves the day with beer (?)

We’re going with the title on YouTube and assuming this is an ad for beer. We’re sure it’s an ad. And we’re sure that’s Arnold. But really, that tiny bottle could have anything in it.

The report, which averages four point-in-time snapshots of fan and interaction numbers in January to generate like and engagement figures, found grocery brand page fans to be the most engaged with 10% of fans talking about the brand pages analysed in the study, compared to 2% for snackfoods.

Digital strategist at Online Circle, Lucio Ribeiro, says that due to their nature some industries have a greater opportunity to activate engagement than others.

He also says, “We know there were some issues for some brands throughout the year which may have affected some of those categories.”

Banks and financial institutions, a category that along with grocery retailing experienced its share of negative brand attention on social media during January, ranked second in terms of engagement at 5.2%.

The highest engagement rates, a simple equation of number ‘talking about this’ page divided by number of fans, were recorded by Rydges Hotels and Resorts at 28.0%, Air New Zealand – Australia at 27.4%, Gnc Living Well Australia at 25.8%, Breaka Flavoured Milk at 22.4%, David Jones at 18.7%and Hyundai Australia at 13.1%.

‘People talking about this’ is defined by Facebook as the number of unique people who have created a story about a page in the past week, by liking the page or one of its posts, posting on its wall, answering a question, responding to an event, mentioning the page, tagging the page in a photo or checkin, or recommending the page or place.

Citibank recorded an enormous 78.7% engagement rate off a low base of 1,171, indicating they either have uber-engaged fans or were impacted by a recent event.

Queen Victoria markets in Melbourne, which are currently running night food markets every Wednesday, came in with high engagement also (20.5%) illustrating how checkins can drive engagement levels.

The performance of brand pages on Facebook are shown by category below.

Grocery

Most liked: Woolworths the Fresh Food People – 104,097 fans
Most talked about: Woolworths the Fresh Food People – 26,934 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Woolworths the Fresh Food People – 25.9% engagement rate

Banking and Financial

Most liked: Commonwealth Bank – 103,725 fans
Most talked about: Commonwealth Bank – 5694 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Citibank Australia – 78.7% engagement rate

Travel – Airlines

Most liked: Qantas – 131,358 fans
Most talked about: Jetstar Australia – 3914 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Air Australia, 21.6% engagement rate

FMCG – Snackfoods

Most liked: Pringles Australia – 491,003 fans
Most talked about: Streets Cornetto – 7746 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Streets Cornetto – 12.3% engagement rate

FMCG – Beverages

Most liked: Coca-Cola Australia – 694,811 fans
Most talked about: V Energy Drink Australia – 5626 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Breaka Flavoured Milk – 22.4% engagement rate

Automotive

Most liked: Holden – 241,967 fans
Most talked about: Hyuandai Australia – 4680 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Hyundai Australia – 13.1% engagement rate

Energy and Utilities

Most liked: Lumo Energy – 25,030 fans
Most talked about: Lumo Energy – 254 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: ActewAGL – 12.2% engagement rate

Telecommunications

Most liked: Voadafone Australia – 130,251 fans
Most talked about: Boost Mobile – 1512 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Spintel – 18.8% engagement rate

Pharmaceuticals

Most liked: Panadol Australia – 26,313 fans
Most talked about: Panadol Australia – 950 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Official QV Skin Care – 13.2% engagement rate

Travel – Accommodation

Most liked: Wotif.com – 64,849 fans
Most talked about: LateRooms.com – 1316 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Hamilton Island – 7.3% engagement rate

Retail – Departments stores

Most liked: CatchOfTheDay.com.au – 185,395 fans
Most talked about: David Jones – 6458 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: David Jones – 7.1% engagement rate

Retail – Fashion

Most liked: SUPRE – 374,889 fans
Most talked about: Lorna Jane – 12,939people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Dotti – 16.4% engagement rate

The report, which its authors plan to conduct bimonthly (every two months), is the first of its kind in Australia and was developed as a benchmark for the Australian industry. It doesn’t analyse the sentiment of interactions with the brands nor look at other channels but there are plans to do so in the future, according to Ribeiro.

The report notes pages that have experienced high growth in fan numbers over the survey period were more likely to record high engagement rates, “The nature of this growth means that people are engaging with the brand page and so we see high growth pages having high engagement. This will settle once the fan growth consolidates and the challenge moves towards activating and engaging the fans.”

Share of engagement is also calculated for the top brands in each category by summing the top 20 pages’ (if there are 20 pages above the statistical confidence level) ‘people talking about’ figures and calculating each brand page’s share of that sum.

Online Circle, who consult to Kraft Foods and Cadbury, state in the report that the list of brands included is not exhaustive but intended to be “representative of those brands leading the way in each vertical”. They anticipate adding more brands to the study in subsequent reports and plan to incorporate other channels such as YouTube.

The data for this report was captured automatically using Facebook APIs at 12 midday on January 10, 17, 24 and 31. Averages of fan numbers and people talking about the brands across the four days for selected brand pages were used to generate the statistics.

The report, which averages four point-in-time snapshots of fan and interaction numbers in January to generate like and engagement figures, found grocery brand page fans to be the most engaged with 10% of fans talking about the brand pages analysed in the study, compared to 2% for snackfoods.

Digital strategist at Online Circle, Lucio Ribeiro, says that due to their nature some industries have a greater opportunity to activate engagement than others.

He also says, “We know there were some issues for some brands throughout the year which may have affected some of those categories.”

Banks and financial institutions, a category that along with grocery retailing experienced its share of negative brand attention on social media during January, ranked second in terms of engagement at 5.2%.

The highest engagement rates, a simple equation of number ‘talking about this’ page divided by number of fans, were recorded by Rydges Hotels and Resorts at 28.0%, Air New Zealand – Australia at 27.4%, Gnc Living Well Australia at 25.8%, Breaka Flavoured Milk at 22.4%, David Jones at 18.7%and Hyundai Australia at 13.1%.

‘People talking about this’ is defined by Facebook as the number of unique people who have created a story about a page in the past week, by liking the page or one of its posts, posting on its wall, answering a question, responding to an event, mentioning the page, tagging the page in a photo or checkin, or recommending the page or place.

Citibank recorded an enormous 78.7% engagement rate off a low base of 1,171, indicating they either have uber-engaged fans or were impacted by a recent event.

Queen Victoria markets in Melbourne, which are currently running night food markets every Wednesday, came in with high engagement also (20.5%) illustrating how checkins can drive engagement levels.

The performance of brand pages on Facebook are shown by category below.

Grocery

Most liked: Woolworths the Fresh Food People – 104,097 fans
Most talked about: Woolworths the Fresh Food People – 26,934 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Woolworths the Fresh Food People – 25.9% engagement rate

Banking and Financial

Most liked: Commonwealth Bank – 103,725 fans
Most talked about: Commonwealth Bank – 5694 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Citibank Australia – 78.7% engagement rate

Travel – Airlines

Most liked: Qantas – 131,358 fans
Most talked about: Jetstar Australia – 3914 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Air Australia, 21.6% engagement rate

FMCG – Snackfoods

Most liked: Pringles Australia – 491,003 fans
Most talked about: Streets Cornetto – 7746 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Streets Cornetto – 12.3% engagement rate

FMCG – Beverages

Most liked: Coca-Cola Australia – 694,811 fans
Most talked about: V Energy Drink Australia – 5626 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Breaka Flavoured Milk – 22.4% engagement rate

Automotive

Most liked: Holden – 241,967 fans
Most talked about: Hyuandai Australia – 4680 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Hyundai Australia – 13.1% engagement rate

Energy and Utilities

Most liked: Lumo Energy – 25,030 fans
Most talked about: Lumo Energy – 254 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: ActewAGL – 12.2% engagement rate

Telecommunications

Most liked: Voadafone Australia – 130,251 fans
Most talked about: Boost Mobile – 1512 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Spintel – 18.8% engagement rate

Pharmaceuticals

Most liked: Panadol Australia – 26,313 fans
Most talked about: Panadol Australia – 950 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Official QV Skin Care – 13.2% engagement rate

Travel – Accommodation

Most liked: Wotif.com – 64,849 fans
Most talked about: LateRooms.com – 1316 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Hamilton Island – 7.3% engagement rate

Retail – Departments stores

Most liked: CatchOfTheDay.com.au – 185,395 fans
Most talked about: David Jones – 6458 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: David Jones – 7.1% engagement rate

Retail – Fashion

Most liked: SUPRE – 374,889 fans
Most talked about: Lorna Jane – 12,939people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Dotti – 16.4% engagement rate

The report, which its authors plan to conduct bimonthly (every two months), is the first of its kind in Australia and was developed as a benchmark for the Australian industry. It doesn’t analyse the sentiment of interactions with the brands nor look at other channels but there are plans to do so in the future, according to Ribeiro.

The report notes pages that have experienced high growth in fan numbers over the survey period were more likely to record high engagement rates, “The nature of this growth means that people are engaging with the brand page and so we see high growth pages having high engagement. This will settle once the fan growth consolidates and the challenge moves towards activating and engaging the fans.”

Share of engagement is also calculated for the top brands in each category by summing the top 20 pages’ (if there are 20 pages above the statistical confidence level) ‘people talking about’ figures and calculating each brand page’s share of that sum.

Online Circle, who consult to Kraft Foods and Cadbury, state in the report that the list of brands included is not exhaustive but intended to be “representative of those brands leading the way in each vertical”. They anticipate adding more brands to the study in subsequent reports and plan to incorporate other channels such as YouTube.

The data for this report was captured automatically using Facebook APIs at 12 midday on January 10, 17, 24 and 31. Averages of fan numbers and people talking about the brands across the four days for selected brand pages were used to generate the statistics.

The report, which averages four point-in-time snapshots of fan and interaction numbers in January to generate like and engagement figures, found grocery brand page fans to be the most engaged with 10% of fans talking about the brand pages analysed in the study, compared to 2% for snackfoods.

Digital strategist at Online Circle, Lucio Ribeiro, says that due to their nature some industries have a greater opportunity to activate engagement than others.

He also says, “We know there were some issues for some brands throughout the year which may have affected some of those categories.”

Banks and financial institutions, a category that along with grocery retailing experienced its share of negative brand attention on social media during January, ranked second in terms of engagement at 5.2%.

The highest engagement rates, a simple equation of number ‘talking about this’ page divided by number of fans, were recorded by Rydges Hotels and Resorts at 28.0%, Air New Zealand – Australia at 27.4%, Gnc Living Well Australia at 25.8%, Breaka Flavoured Milk at 22.4%, David Jones at 18.7%and Hyundai Australia at 13.1%.

‘People talking about this’ is defined by Facebook as the number of unique people who have created a story about a page in the past week, by liking the page or one of its posts, posting on its wall, answering a question, responding to an event, mentioning the page, tagging the page in a photo or checkin, or recommending the page or place.

Citibank recorded an enormous 78.7% engagement rate off a low base of 1,171, indicating they either have uber-engaged fans or were impacted by a recent event.

Queen Victoria markets in Melbourne, which are currently running night food markets every Wednesday, came in with high engagement also (20.5%) illustrating how checkins can drive engagement levels.

The performance of brand pages on Facebook are shown by category below.

Grocery

Most liked: Woolworths the Fresh Food People – 104,097 fans
Most talked about: Woolworths the Fresh Food People – 26,934 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Woolworths the Fresh Food People – 25.9% engagement rate

Banking and Financial

Most liked: Commonwealth Bank – 103,725 fans
Most talked about: Commonwealth Bank – 5694 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Citibank Australia – 78.7% engagement rate

Travel – Airlines

Most liked: Qantas – 131,358 fans
Most talked about: Jetstar Australia – 3914 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Air Australia, 21.6% engagement rate

FMCG – Snackfoods

Most liked: Pringles Australia – 491,003 fans
Most talked about: Streets Cornetto – 7746 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Streets Cornetto – 12.3% engagement rate

FMCG – Beverages

Most liked: Coca-Cola Australia – 694,811 fans
Most talked about: V Energy Drink Australia – 5626 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Breaka Flavoured Milk – 22.4% engagement rate

Automotive

Most liked: Holden – 241,967 fans
Most talked about: Hyuandai Australia – 4680 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Hyundai Australia – 13.1% engagement rate

Energy and Utilities

Most liked: Lumo Energy – 25,030 fans
Most talked about: Lumo Energy – 254 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: ActewAGL – 12.2% engagement rate

Telecommunications

Most liked: Voadafone Australia – 130,251 fans
Most talked about: Boost Mobile – 1512 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Spintel – 18.8% engagement rate

Pharmaceuticals

Most liked: Panadol Australia – 26,313 fans
Most talked about: Panadol Australia – 950 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Official QV Skin Care – 13.2% engagement rate

Travel – Accommodation

Most liked: Wotif.com – 64,849 fans
Most talked about: LateRooms.com – 1316 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Hamilton Island – 7.3% engagement rate

Retail – Departments stores

Most liked: CatchOfTheDay.com.au – 185,395 fans
Most talked about: David Jones – 6458 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: David Jones – 7.1% engagement rate

Retail – Fashion

Most liked: SUPRE – 374,889 fans
Most talked about: Lorna Jane – 12,939people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Dotti – 16.4% engagement rate

The report, which its authors plan to conduct bimonthly (every two months), is the first of its kind in Australia and was developed as a benchmark for the Australian industry. It doesn’t analyse the sentiment of interactions with the brands nor look at other channels but there are plans to do so in the future, according to Ribeiro.

The report notes pages that have experienced high growth in fan numbers over the survey period were more likely to record high engagement rates, “The nature of this growth means that people are engaging with the brand page and so we see high growth pages having high engagement. This will settle once the fan growth consolidates and the challenge moves towards activating and engaging the fans.”

Share of engagement is also calculated for the top brands in each category by summing the top 20 pages’ (if there are 20 pages above the statistical confidence level) ‘people talking about’ figures and calculating each brand page’s share of that sum.

Online Circle, who consult to Kraft Foods and Cadbury, state in the report that the list of brands included is not exhaustive but intended to be “representative of those brands leading the way in each vertical”. They anticipate adding more brands to the study in subsequent reports and plan to incorporate other channels such as YouTube.

The data for this report was captured automatically using Facebook APIs at 12 midday on January 10, 17, 24 and 31. Averages of fan numbers and people talking about the brands across the four days for selected brand pages were used to generate the statistics.

The report, which averages four point-in-time snapshots of fan and interaction numbers in January to generate like and engagement figures, found grocery brand page fans to be the most engaged with 10% of fans talking about the brand pages analysed in the study, compared to 2% for snackfoods.

Digital strategist at Online Circle, Lucio Ribeiro, says that due to their nature some industries have a greater opportunity to activate engagement than others.

He also says, “We know there were some issues for some brands throughout the year which may have affected some of those categories.”

Banks and financial institutions, a category that along with grocery retailing experienced its share of negative brand attention on social media during January, ranked second in terms of engagement at 5.2%.

The highest engagement rates, a simple equation of number ‘talking about this’ page divided by number of fans, were recorded by Rydges Hotels and Resorts at 28.0%, Air New Zealand – Australia at 27.4%, Gnc Living Well Australia at 25.8%, Breaka Flavoured Milk at 22.4%, David Jones at 18.7%and Hyundai Australia at 13.1%.

‘People talking about this’ is defined by Facebook as the number of unique people who have created a story about a page in the past week, by liking the page or one of its posts, posting on its wall, answering a question, responding to an event, mentioning the page, tagging the page in a photo or checkin, or recommending the page or place.

Citibank recorded an enormous 78.7% engagement rate off a low base of 1,171, indicating they either have uber-engaged fans or were impacted by a recent event.

Queen Victoria markets in Melbourne, which are currently running night food markets every Wednesday, came in with high engagement also (20.5%) illustrating how checkins can drive engagement levels.

The performance of brand pages on Facebook are shown by category below.

Grocery

Most liked: Woolworths the Fresh Food People – 104,097 fans
Most talked about: Woolworths the Fresh Food People – 26,934 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Woolworths the Fresh Food People – 25.9% engagement rate

Banking and Financial

Most liked: Commonwealth Bank – 103,725 fans
Most talked about: Commonwealth Bank – 5694 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Citibank Australia – 78.7% engagement rate

Travel – Airlines

Most liked: Qantas – 131,358 fans
Most talked about: Jetstar Australia – 3914 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Air Australia, 21.6% engagement rate

FMCG – Snackfoods

Most liked: Pringles Australia – 491,003 fans
Most talked about: Streets Cornetto – 7746 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Streets Cornetto – 12.3% engagement rate

FMCG – Beverages

Most liked: Coca-Cola Australia – 694,811 fans
Most talked about: V Energy Drink Australia – 5626 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Breaka Flavoured Milk – 22.4% engagement rate

Automotive

Most liked: Holden – 241,967 fans
Most talked about: Hyuandai Australia – 4680 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Hyundai Australia – 13.1% engagement rate

Energy and Utilities

Most liked: Lumo Energy – 25,030 fans
Most talked about: Lumo Energy – 254 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: ActewAGL – 12.2% engagement rate

Telecommunications

Most liked: Voadafone Australia – 130,251 fans
Most talked about: Boost Mobile – 1512 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Spintel – 18.8% engagement rate

Pharmaceuticals

Most liked: Panadol Australia – 26,313 fans
Most talked about: Panadol Australia – 950 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Official QV Skin Care – 13.2% engagement rate

Travel – Accommodation

Most liked: Wotif.com – 64,849 fans
Most talked about: LateRooms.com – 1316 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Hamilton Island – 7.3% engagement rate

Retail – Departments stores

Most liked: CatchOfTheDay.com.au – 185,395 fans
Most talked about: David Jones – 6458 people talking about page
Most engaged audience: David Jones – 7.1% engagement rate

Retail – Fashion

Most liked: SUPRE – 374,889 fans
Most talked about: Lorna Jane – 12,939people talking about page
Most engaged audience: Dotti – 16.4% engagement rate

The report, which its authors plan to conduct bimonthly (every two months), is the first of its kind in Australia and was developed as a benchmark for the Australian industry. It doesn’t analyse the sentiment of interactions with the brands nor look at other channels but there are plans to do so in the future, according to Ribeiro.

The report notes pages that have experienced high growth in fan numbers over the survey period were more likely to record high engagement rates, “The nature of this growth means that people are engaging with the brand page and so we see high growth pages having high engagement. This will settle once the fan growth consolidates and the challenge moves towards activating and engaging the fans.”

Share of engagement is also calculated for the top brands in each category by summing the top 20 pages’ (if there are 20 pages above the statistical confidence level) ‘people talking about’ figures and calculating each brand page’s share of that sum.

Online Circle, who consult to Kraft Foods and Cadbury, state in the report that the list of brands included is not exhaustive but intended to be “representative of those brands leading the way in each vertical”. They anticipate adding more brands to the study in subsequent reports and plan to incorporate other channels such as YouTube.

The data for this report was captured automatically using Facebook APIs at 12 midday on January 10, 17, 24 and 31. Averages of fan numbers and people talking about the brands across the four days for selected brand pages were used to generate the statistics.

The campaign, set to launch on 5 March and span TV, outdoor and digital channels, will incorporate elements of humour but aims to reinforce the premium standing of the new variant, according to Marketing’s sister publication [Ed's note: in name only], Marketing UK.

Head of customer marketing for off-trade at Heineken, Doug Walker, told Marketing UK that the campaign was being brought in to make sure the premium beer was top of mind for consumers in the lead up to Summer.

“We’re launching the next phase of the Foster’s Gold campaign in time for the crucial Summer trading period, and reaching nine million of our target audience to make sure that it’s on the top of the list when shoppers drop in to a local shop,” Walker said.

Launched in August 2011, Foster’s Gold is a 4.8% alcohol by volume beer aimed at tapping into mixed-sex drinking occasions. Since launch, it has sold 33 million bottles in the UK.

The campaign will continue the humorous theme featuring regulars, Brad and Dan, who will be joined by Holly Valance, originally of Neighbours fame, in the first commercial.

The face of Foster’s Gold, Valance has starred in previous ads for the brand alongside Brad and Dan, such as the launch ad shown below which emphasises the Australian accent and is set at Opera Bar in the forecourt of Sydney’s Opera House.

Image credit: Marketing UK.