I popped out of the office briefly this week to hear Facebook’s Graham Mudd speak at the Integrated Marketing Week conference on the subject of measuring success across publishers. Graham, by the way, is the Head of Vertical Measurement at Facebook and is thusly well positioned to guide marketers on what metrics matter and which ones don’t.  Given the seemingly universal obsession with Likes, I was quite curious what Mudd thought about this and other Facebook-related metrics.  Here’s what he had to say…

Drew: Many digital media buyers are still obsessed with Likes and Clicks as a measure of ad efficacy.  Is this a mistake and if so, what metrics should they be looking at?
It’s a mistake unless the business outcome they are trying to drive is either directly related or correlated to clicks or likes.  If a marketer’s goal is to build a community of its strongest customers online or drive people to their website, then likes and clicks are a great measure of success. On the other hand, if they’re trying to drive sales, either online or offline, then they should be measuring sales, not likes or clicks. For instance, we’ve seen that for 99% of sales generated offline are from people seeing an ad online, not clicking on that ad.

Drew:For several years, marketers and pundits have tried to put a value on a Facebook Like.  Is this a fool’s errand or have you seen cases where a Like ultimately translates into business value?
The degree to which the value of a like is important is really driven by the marketer’s goals.  If the marketer wants to focus on building a community online or connecting with influencers, then understanding how much those customers are worth is obviously critical to understanding how much to invest.

If a marketer has more traditional goals like customer acquisition or driving online or offline sales, then they shouldn’t be paying attention to likes as much as how much their marketing efforts drove sales.

One thing that’s abundantly clear is that just like customer LTVs (life time values), there is huge variance from industry to industry and advertiser to advertisers in terms of the value of a fan.

Drew: Measuring cross-publisher effectiveness seems like a smart idea. Are there any barriers preventing this from happening now? 
The primary barrier is siloed data.  By that, I mean that each publisher is measured using a different technology/methodology so the ability to make comparisons across media partners is inherently limited. While there are definitely options out there, we believe there’s a real opportunity to focus on comparability and standardization of measurement across platforms, which is why we acquired Atlas recently.

We really believe in cross publisher measurement for three reasons: (1) our customers are pushing for this and we believe it’s good for digital marketing to be as accountable as possible; (2) we’re confident that when measured accurately, Facebook will perform really well as a marketing platform; (3) we recognize that marketing budgets generally aren’t growing, so in order for us to grow, we need to work closely with brands and agencies to demonstrate that we are a cost effecient and effective channel.

Drew: How exactly do you measure cross-publsiher effectiveness? 
Really depends on the marketing objective:  If the marketer has direct response goals, then we believe multi-touch attribution is the best methodology for understanding and valuing all the ad exposures that ultimately lead to a conversion. The last click before a purchase shouldn’t be getting all the credit for exposures and actions taken along the way to purchase.  If the marketer has branding objectives, then we believe they should be measuring and optimizing on reach and frequency using a tool like Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) or comScore VCE.  They should also measuring brand lift and if possible, offline sales. Our customers are working with a company called Datalogix to measure how ads on Facebook impact lift in advertisers’ in-store sales.

Drew: Can you provide any real world examples of brands/agencies that are measuring cross-publisher effectiveness and how this is working for them?  (What kinds of things are they learning?)
Many major direct response advertisers in verticals like Telecom, Financial Services and e-Commerce are using highly comparable measurement techniques like multi touch attribution.  Within campaigns and from campaign to campaign  they are constantly learning how various publishers perform and can reallocate budget accordingly.

Brand advertisers use tools like Nielsen OCR and comScore VCE to understand which publishers are deliver their desired audience with controlled frequency and maximum reach.

Drew:  Marketers tend to look at Facebook as exclusively a B2C channel.  Can you give me an example or two of B2B marketing campaigns on Facebook that are moving the needle?
HubSpot is one that comes to mind right away. It wanted to promote its brand as a thought-leader in the business-to-business field on Facebook to lead fans to its Page and ultimately engage them with other content and drive customer engagement and generate more leads.  The company ran ads that targeted different age segments, including 24-34, 35-44, and 45-44, along with Likes and Interests such as “marketing director,” “marketing manager,” and “marketing manager.”  HubSpot increased engagement on its Page by posting updates about marketing conferences and e-commerce tips as well as links to demos and videos. As a result it saw 71% sales increase from Facebook over the course of three months and 39% increase in traffic coming from Facebook during the course of three months

Drew:  Should B2B marketers look at different metrics than B2C brands when putting together a Facebook and/or cross-publisher ad campaign? 
Just as is the case for B2C marketers, B2B should try to use whatever metric mostly approximates or directly measures their business outcome.  Measuring sales leads using MTA is certainly possible if the lead generation occurs online. Recently we’ve developed the capability to allow advertisers to upload CRM data to Facebook and reach customer segments on Facebook using a targeting feature called custom audiences.  This is a really powerful tool for B2B marketers — and because CRM databases typically track transactional data, marketers can effectively connect exposures to ads on Facebook (and other online and offline channels) with conversions.

Drew: Big companies with big budgets tend to have more sophisticated tools to work with.  Can a small advertiser measure cross-publisher effectivenes and if so, how?
Smaller advertisers that have DR objectives often utilize ad products that are more straightforward from a cross publisher perspective.  Tools like coupons or discounts, such as our Offers product, can be tracked on a redemption basis, which is easy to compare from publisher to publisher.  Same is true for online conversion measurement — Facebook and others provide conversion pixels which can link ad exposure to buying and be compared across sites.

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Paul Greenberg is CEO of CollegeHumor, a division of IAC that is growing faster than you can say Rodney Dangerfield. At this point, it is easy to believe that Greenberg’s mission for his organization, “To be the best and largest multimedia multi-platform comedy studio,” will be realized soon enough.  In the meantime, I thought you would appreciate more insights from Paul on making viral videos, budgeting, how marketers can work with CollegeHumor and lastly, how to lead a creative organization.

Drew: Is one type of video more likely to viral than another?
Often the ones that go really viral are new sketches. Because it is a new idea, it gets introduced, people latch onto it, they love it and they send it around.  And so for example, we did one that was called, Gay Men Will Marry Your Girlfriends. The thrust is, let gay men marry each other because if not, they’re going to marry your girlfriends and they are going to be much better husbands than you would ever be!

Another one that went really viral was called Look At This Instagram (see below).  And it wasn’t again in the Zeitgeist per se but it was a great take on how people use Instagram and it really kind of turned it on its head and parodied it beautifully and people just kind of I know I’ve seen those pictures a million times, I know what they are talking about, and so we really hit those.

Drew: Are series any different from a virality standpoint?
With series you are less apt to get into the Zeitgeist really quickly and so you build an audience over time.  So we’ll often see in a series episodes further down the chain do better than the original ones or we’ll see them catch up. People will discover Very Mary Kate on its 10th episode and go ‘oh wow, I didn’t know about this, and I am going to go back and re-watch all of them. We see binge-watching all the time, people just come in and they watch fifteen videos at a time, and a lot of times it is going back to start series when they’ve come in the middle.  Not that everything is serialized in terms of its plot, but it is just obviously thematically serialized and so we want to make sure that people love to go back and check it out.

Drew:  So how do you budget for production?
We work a monthly basis. So, I say to the team, ‘here is your pot for the month, some you are going to spend more on some and less on some and you know do what you got to do.’  And we work very closely as a team to make sure that if, for example, we are going to go for broke on a Batman video, we are going to do a couple of more Hardly Workings or batch-shoot those and try to do things cheaply. Overall, we’re very efficient in terms of costs.  We have figured out lots of ways to cut corners: we shoot in the office so we don’t have to pay location and we batch-shoot sometimes. It’s very efficient.

Drew:  Are your videos the primary driver of traffic and new users? 
To an extent, although sometimes the non-video content gets shared just as much as the video stuff.  For example, the article Eight New Punctuation Marks That You Need got over a million views because it just got shared everywhere. And now there is interest in a series of it. So it really depends, [non-video] content can really drive a lot of view as well.

Drew:  Do the video creative team also create the other stuff? 
No. We have a separate production team including separate writers who have to be very topically driven.

Drew; Okay, do we get to the point where there is a cable station called CollegeHumor?
No, I don’t think so.  I mean I feel like being the multiplatform studio that we are, we are as close to a new age cable channel as you can get.

Drew:  So tell me about Coffee Town, your upcoming movie—did you write this in-house?
We actually did finance it but we didn’t write the script. Our agent UTA found Brad Copeland who was the writer for Arrested Development.  Brad wrote his own movie script and was looking for somebody to help to allow him to produce it and direct it.  So we were the studio. Brad wrote it, directed it and we produced it.  We went out to LA and hired a film crew, a real legitimate movie crew, etc.  (see trailer here)

Drew: I would suspect you are hoping to rally your army of CollegeHumor fans to see the movie, right? 
Yeah, oh yeah.  We’ll definitely use the army without question. A big part of this is the fact that we can mobilize 20 million people immediately to say or to at least raise awareness if not to get them off their butts into the theatres. And if we put it on iTunes, we can say, hey click here and you’ll be able to watch CollegeHumor’s movie.

Drew:  What exactly is native advertising and what are you doing in this area?
Native advertising is when the advertising blends more with existing content and it becomes less distinguishable as an ad.  We’ve been doing that for five years whether we called it branded entertainment or branded content or branded advertising or native advertising, About a year ago, we reorganized an entire group around native advertising.  We hired two comedy writers just to write branded content and native advertising pieces and we also reorganized a production team so now we have a native advertising production team that just creates videos for advertisers. Out of those 50 videos we create in a month, maybe less than half are advertising video.  But it still feels like CollegeHumor content and people — advertisers [like KFC, AXE & Listerine] come to us because they are interested in our sensibility.

Drew Neisser:  What’s the best way for marketers to work with CollegeHumor? 
Great question. We need to understand what you are trying to do.  Are you trying to increase sales?  Are you trying to just increase your brand perception?  Are you trying to increase relevancy?  Are you trying to activate an audience to go do something? Is about getting more Facebook likes? What do you want as a brand?  And then we can help you come up with content that fits that goal.

Drew: How involved are you in the content decision making process?
Not that involved, at this point, certainly not day to day. We have a phenomenal team of very creative people who are very good at what they do.  I get involved at a high level making sure that we have a strategy and we are trying to follow it and everybody knows what that strategy.  I’ll get very involved if something is questionable from a legal perspective or a taste perspective. But on balance, and that’s how I try to manage my team – hire the best people you can, hopefully people who are smarter than you, and who are experts at what they do and you get obstacles out of their way and you let them do what they do.  And so I don’t see any need to micromanage the content team. Besides, I’m not that funny.

Drew: Have you gotten funnier since you joined?
Much. Much funnier–I’m hilarious.  Actually it is intimidating in a way because these guys are really funny. And they are so quick. We have our weekly staff meetings and even a lot of the executives are standups [comics], and they are just hilarious. I mean it is like somebody took all of the best class clowns and put them all together in one room, it’s hysterical.  It is a really fun place to work.

Drew Neisser:  Do you ever say to yourself, ‘I can believe I have this job?’
Yeah.  Yeah, it’s awesome. I love creating content and creating products that affect people’s lives in a positive way.  That’s one of the things that’s always driven me from a business perspective.

Drew: How about a few secrets to your success?
One is, never stop working ever; just be as aggressive as possible and want to win and do your work your absolute hardest because there is always somebody who is going to work harder than you are and ideas are wonderful but they are a dime-a-dozen.  Everything comes down to execution and doing it right and doing it well.

Drew: Do you have any advice for new or aspiring CEOs?
The advice somebody once gave me for managing is, only do what only you can do and spend your time doing that.  To that end, I wrote an article on this recently that identified five things that CEOs should spend their time doing:

1. Set the strategy for what the company needs to be and what we are trying to accomplish and what’s our mission and where are we going.  And that’s not done in a vacuum per se, that’s done with the team but ultimately the leader has to be the one who puts his or her stamp on it and say this is the direction we are going to go.
2. Then it’s making sure that the strategy is communicated very well and that everybody knows what’s going on and that there’s absolutely no misunderstanding. And making sure that everybody is coordinated so that ad sales and editorial and marketing and PR all know what each of the other ones is doing, to help support that overall strategy.
3. Then its hiring and firing.  Personnel.  Putting the right people in place, and making sure that they are — smarter than you, they’re experts in their field and they are great.
4. Then it is getting obstacles out of their way and letting them do their jobs and not micromanaging them but making sure that if there is something wrong, that you are there to help them.
5. The fifth thing is making sure there’s enough capital to run the business and making sure there is a business plan that can be executed.

Drew: You’ve been on both sides of the creative development process including being a voice over talent and a radio announcer. Do you think that has helped you as a leader of a creative-driven company?
Yes. If there is somebody who is never been a creative before and never been on the talent side, you’re going to make decisions purely based on the bottom-line and probably potentially the wrong ones.

Note: this is the 2nd part of my interview with Paul. Click here to see the first part. 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: So, a rabbi, priest and the content marketer walk into a bar.  The bartender asks, “well gents, what’ll it be?” The rabbi glances around the crowded room lamenting, “I see you are serving some of my tribe here, would you mind sending them to temple on Friday night?”  The priest, echoing the thoughts of the rabbi, says “yes and if you would send my flock over on Sunday that would be most kind.”  The content marketer, ignoring his companions’ discretion, jumps onto the bar and shouts at the top of lungs, “Drinks on me everyone, our ‘Sobriety Rules’ video just went viral!”

Now that we’ve established there are no jobs for me in comedy, let me introduce you to a veritable lion of laughter, Paul Greenberg, the CEO of CollegeHumor Media (owned by IAC). Paul and I had a lengthy chat a couple of months back about the inner workings at CollegeHumor, part of which is transcribed below.  I think you will agree after reading this that Paul has one of the best jobs around, working with funny people to make other people laugh AND making money doing it.  Look closer and you’ll also see how I was able to glean a few of the 18 Things College Humor Can Teach You About Content Marketing for an upcoming FastCompany.com post.

Drew: When did you join CollegeHumor and how its been going since then?
Sure, I joined two and a half years ago.  I was brought in to help grow the company and we have grown 40 percent year over year in traffic over the past two years.  We’ve also grown our revenue and we’ve grown 40% in traffic, we are now the eighth largest YouTube channel with over 4.5 million subscribers; we have 15 million monthly unique visitors which again is up, way up over from where we were a couple of years ago; we do a 100 million video streams per month.

Drew: So you’re a lot more than a website?
Yes, look at us as a multiplatform, multimedia studio.  We’re not a website.  We create enormous amount of content and we publish it on our O&O website, we publish it on YouTube, we publish it to game consoles, we publish it to connected TVs and now we are starting to create traditional long-form television shows and are very close to several deals with major cable networks to do that.  We are also going into lots of other areas of business like publishing three books, numerous DVDs and have shot a full-length movie called Coffee Town that will be released in July (see trailer here).

Drew: Tell me about the video production process.
We do about 50 videos per month and it’s all created in-house.  We have a production team here in New York a team in LA. It is all original content; we have our own writers, we have our own directors, we have our own producers and editors and it’s all created under the banner of CollegeHumor.

Drew: Do have some kind of schedule for your series like Jake and Amir?
Yes. Jake and Amir comes out every Tuesday like clockwork and Hardly Working comes out every Friday.  Some of the other series we do more in seasons.  Very Mary Kate, for example, will have a run of 15 straight weeks with an episode and then it’ll take a break.  It really depends on the production schedule and the actors, the writers, and how we can work around their schedules. But we try to be consistent and let people know when things are coming out — that’s the best way to build an audience.

Drew:  I happened to watch an episode of Very Mary Kate (Drinking Party) and I have to ask, has there been any pushback from the real Mary Kate?
You know I can’t speak for her, from what I understand, completely anecdotally she is a fan and she thinks it’s very funny.

Drew:  How do the parody movie trailers fit in?
There are two kinds of videos we do; one are series, which we just talked about and one are just one-off sketches.  And a movie trailer for us is like a sketch.  It is just like a Saturday Night Live skit that we do and if it hits, we’ll do more and if it doesn’t hit, we won’t do more.  So for example, the Dora trailer was an enormous hit — not only was it a hit in the sense of people who said we want to see more of this kind of thing but we also wished this were a real movie. So we made a 12-minute movie which is out in three installments and that was responding to the community.

Drew:  How do know when to stop doing sequels to a sketch?
We now have three of the Startup Guys but that was enough. We didn’t want to beat the joke to death, So it really depends on the kind of life that a sketch will get, we have a series we call The Six which is The Six girlfriends you’ll meet when you are back home, The Six dads that you could have — we started off with The Six dads and that did really well so we thought, all right there’s something here and now we have a bunch of Sixes.

Drew:  When you say “really well,” what does that mean in terms of traffic?
Once it starts to get to the half a million level, we start to really pay attention.  And we don’t just look at views, we look at Facebook likes, we look at shares on Twitter and shares on Tumbler, we are a very social media oriented company.  We have a lot of data and we spend a lot of time analyzing data, loking at the ratio between likes and views, if this getting shared a lot but not watched a lot?  Do we need to give it a little push somewhere? Is it getting watched a lot on our site but not shared very much?  Is there something that doesn’t make it go viral? And we are very good at making content that goes viral and gets shared and so we are always sort of tracking those metrics about social media.

Drew:  So you’ll know pretty early whether it is going to be successful, and if you think you see those early signs do you then do more to fuel the fire?
Yes, absolutely.  We look at it and we say all right, we got to keep this on our homepage, or we need to make sure we post it again to Facebook or something like that.  Creatively we have something called The SIV, which is our secret formula for viral videos and so it needs to make sure that certain videos have certain aspects about them and we keep that very tightly protected, as you might imagine, but it is the sort of the secret sauce of how we create viral videos and we have a team that has honed that art.  You know, not everything hits, obviously but I’d say our track record on balance is pretty good and we are very happy with how it is doing and the team is great at it.

Drew:  Is there a dedicated team to social media?
We have one person who is a social media manager; all she does is spend her time on social networks.  She’s completely in the loop in terms of what’s happening and what is coming up in terms of our schedule, so she’s always out there pushing it to our PR partners. We have another person in our marketing group who pushes stuff to other partners, so we have a well-oiled machine that is constantly making sure that we’re getting our tentacles out everywhere.

Drew: How does Hardly Working fit in?
Hardly Working is a sort of playground for us.  That’s where we put the weird ideas into motion, the ones that we want to experiment with, so we are less concerned about how that does. It is totally bizarre and fun and interesting and it gives us a safe place where we are not expecting huge amount of traffic. We do get some that blow up like Startup Guys [which started as a Hardly Working sketch.]  Not everything starts there, but it is one place that things get started.

Drew:  So it really is all about sort of rapid experimentation?
Exactly. You can’t be afraid to fail, you have to be willing to put yourself out there every day with something new, and they’re not all going to be gems but you get enough hits so that people start to realize wow, these guys have something interesting going on and I’ll go along with them when something is not as great, but I know when I come back there’s going to something for me.

Drew:  If we look at, I’m just focusing on the video, we talked about 50 a month, how many of those have to be hits for that month to be a good month?
Two or three big hits, I would say.  Which is not as easy as it sounds!

Drew:  We’ve been noticing this with business related videos that length matters a lot.  What’s ideal for you?
Absolutely, we try to keep it under 2 or 2½  minutes. Anything longer and people really just glaze.

Drew:  Are you guys into Vine?  Must be tough to do any fun in six seconds?
We’ve done a lot of Vines actually and they are fun experiments. We did a very funny thing for the Oscars–we recreated every Best Picture nominated movie as a Vine.

Drew:  Do you ever say to yourself, “I can believe I have this job, this is so great?”
Yeah, it’s awesome.  I love creating content and creating products that affect people’s lives in a positive way.  That’s one of the things that’s always driven me from a business perspective.

Footnote: Paul also appears in some Hardly Working videos as himself. Here’s one of them.

Once upon a time in the realm of corporate America, there lived a stalwart named B2B. His purposeful walk and confident grin belied his unwavering subservience to all the almighty Sales King, who demanded daily tribute in the form of leads, leads, and more leads. Then one day, quite without warning, B2B died. No one mourned. The end. (Note: If this article seems familiar, then you read it first on FastCompany.com).

Or was it?

Okay, enough with the fairy tale, but here’s the truth: Long synonymous with “better to bore” communications, B2B marketing is in the process of being reborn. Leading this rebirth is a new generation of marketers like Jonathan Becher of SAP and Trip Hunter of Fusion-io, who are overturning conventional wisdom and establishing four new B2B marketing decrees that just might stand for years to come.

Culture Trumps Strategy
When he became the new CMO of software behemoth SAP in 2011, Jonathan Becher (pronounced Becker) was keenly aware of the imbalance of power between Sales and Marketing. Sales demanded leads and Marketing kowtowed. To make matters worse, his team battled internally about metrics, tactics, and budget, not to mention the overall strategic approach.

To fix this, Becher eliminated departmental silos, moving staffers around every six months and committing all to the same primary goals. Staffers no longer just had “majors” but also “minors” that broadened internal expertise. As Becher explained recently at The CMO Club Summit, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so fix your culture to make your strategy work.”

The focus on culture went well beyond reorganizing his staff. Becher banned empty adjectives from internal documents in an effort to eliminate “SAPanese” and other self-indulgent communications. Applying this same “eliminate barriers” mindset to SAP’s external activities, Becher encouraged his team to get to know their customers as individuals, reminding them that “big glass buildings don’t buy products–people do!”

Pursue Hearts, Not Just Minds
When your product is truly disruptive and offers significant price and performance advantages over entrenched competitors, the conventional wisdom would be to focus on rational, feature-heavy messaging. As VP of Corporate Marketing for the rising tech star Fusion-io, Trip Hunter has taken an entirely different approach, finding uniquely “emotional” means of connecting with his targets.

Following the highly successful he engineered in 2011, Hunter has taken Fusion-io marketing to the top of the world–literally–by partnering with mountaineer and U.S. Memory Champion Nelson Dellis, who is currently making his second attempt to summit Everest. Along the way up, Dellis is also testing his memory and raising money for Alzheimer’s research.

Chronicled on a Fusion-io microsite, Dellis’ climb is a multi-dimensional metaphor for the new era of B2B marketing. Explains Hunter, “The Everest Memory Challenge is about getting to know us a bit better, beyond bits and bytes, by sharing something that we think is worthwhile, compelling, and has an emotional connection.” (Proud disclosure: My agency, Renegade, LLC, designed and architected this microsite.)

Less Really is More
As companies grow and products multiply, there is a tendency among B2B marketers to carve up budgets and splinter messages. When Becher took over as CMO, he heard from customers that they received as many as 50 different emails about SAP events and products in any given month; at one point, Becher even realized that multiple events were scheduled in the same week within a few blocks of the same customer. As you might suspect, this marketing onslaught did not endear SAP to its clientele.

In response, Becher and his team created a new evaluation process for events that emphasized quality of engagement over quantity of attendees; in doing so, SAP ultimately reduced the number of events around the world from 3,500 to 1,200. The event overhaul proved its success: A tiny 10-person event led to two deals valued at 70 million euros.

This process of optimization, Becher argues, is a marketer’s best friend, and he practices what he preaches by placing a small number of bigger bets in each of SAP’s communication channels. This also means avoiding what he calls “ego metrics” such as Facebook “Likes” and instead shifting to outcome-focused KPIs that also acknowledge the lengthy sales cycles that are inherent to many B2B efforts.

Content is the Message
Much has been made of content marketing as a powerful new discipline and complement to traditional messaging approaches. Inspired next-generation marketers aren’t bothering to make the distinction between what they say in their ads and the content that they create. For them, this “content” is in fact the message–a message they consider just as effective, if not more so, than traditional ads.

This is certainly the case with Fusion-io’s two-year partnership with Nelson Dellis. Hunter notes: “The Everest Memory Challenge represents qualities that Fusion-io values and embraces. Like Nelson, the Fusion-io team and our customers are people who are adventurous, and take calculated risks to overcome obstacles.”

Prior to his climb, Dellis also appeared at several Fusion-io customer meetings where he could demonstrate his astounding memory skills, including one stop in Japan where he remembered the names of over 70 attendees after meeting them just once two hours earlier. Hunter concludes, “Attaching ourselves to something that is inspirational and representative of who we are as a company says much more about what drives us and our business.”

Final Note: Becher, also known as the “Social CMO,” delivered a keynote at The CMO Club Summit that was well-received by fellow CMOs and well-chronicled by other bloggers (link here). For more on Hunter, see my complete interview with him right here on TheDrewBlog.com.

The program you are about to read about is the kind that has kept me excited about being in the marketing biz for (gasp) over three decades.  It is enlightening. It is entertaining. It is cool. It supports a cause.  And most of all, it is good for the business.  In this case, the business is Fusion-IO, whose marketing is driven by former Renegade Trip Hunter who talks about the program below.  And in the interest of full disclosure, Renegade was lucky enough to play a part in the development of this program, architecting and designing the website.

Drew: For those unfamiliar with Fusion-io, can you provide a quick overview of the company?
Trip: Fusion’s ioMemory software and hardware leverage flash memory to accelerate databases virtualization, cloud computing, big data and the applications that help drive business from the smallest online retailers to the world’s largest data centers.

Drew: The Everest Memory challenge is an interesting twist on ‘content marketing’. Can you tell me a bit about the program?
Trip:It is a great story that has some strong common denominators between Fusion-io and Nelson.  We both represent the world’s best memory, albeit in very different forms. Nelson’s memory is mind-boggling. He can memorize a deck of cards in under a minute, and holds the USA record for memorizing 303 random digits in 5 minutes. On top of that, he is climbing Everest to raise money for Climb for Memory,  a charity he founded to help find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, which afflicted his grandmother.

It is just an incredibly interesting story, and one we thought our community, customers and partners would find as compelling as we do. Along the way, Nelson will be testing his memory to see what happens to it  under the stress of climbing the world’s tallest mountain. We’ll be inviting others to participate by posting memory quizzes as Nelson ascends the mountain.

Drew: I saw the CMO of SAP speak recently and he felt B2B brands need to start acting more like B2C brands.  Certainly the Everest Memory Challenge seems more like a B2C effort. What do you hope this program will do for Fusion-io?
Trip: The Everest Memory Challenge represents qualities that Fusion-io values and embraces. Like Nelson, the Fusion-io team and our customers are  people who are adventurous, and take calculated risks to overcome obstacles. We see a bit of ourselves in him, so it is a story we want to share, and whether you work in B2B or B2C, it is one you can relate to.

The Everest Memory Challenge is in some way, about getting to know us a bit better, beyond bits and bytes, by sharing something that we think is worthwhile, compelling and has an emotional connection. It’s a bit like a first date with someone you work with: When you realize you have mutual interests outside of the office, you become more interested in each other.

Drew: Of course, I think this whole thing is really cool.  Have you gotten any feedback from folks that weren’t involved in the development of the site?
Trip: Yes, and it ranges from “I love it” to “I don’t get it.”  I think this effort adds a new dimension to our marketing, in addition to traditional content driven marketing, but naturally there are some skeptics. That being said, there are very strong connections between Nelson and Fusion that make this more strategic than many sponsorship opportunities. This is more than sticking our name on a golf bag or a hat. Attaching ourselves to something that is inspirational and representative of who we are as a company says much more about what drives us and our business.

Drew: How long have you been working with Nelson, and why him?
Trip: We started working with Nelson about two years ago, shortly after he won the USA Memory Championships for the first time. We are both champions of being the world’s best at memory, so it felt like an easy fit. Nelson’s story is also new to people; “He’s a memory what?” People are intrigued and it breaks through the noise because they haven’t heard this story already.

We have worked with Nelson to create a video series on how to learn his memory techniques, such as memorizing names, which most of us can stand to become better at, to having him at events, where he can memorize 75-100 names of our guests just by meeting them as they arrive. It makes for a pretty memorable moment when he walks around a room recalling everyone’s name. It is a moment that our customers and partners don’t soon forget.

Drew: Seems like this is a really tight partnership. Do you have any words of wisdom on how to make the most of partnership programs like this?
Trip: Look for partnerships where there is real synergy with your core values and brand promise.

Drew: One of the risks of a program like this is that it is a ‘one-off’ which is only great while it last. How does the Everest Memory Challenge fit into your overall marketing strategy?
Trip: We are developing a number of initiatives that focus on how Fusion provides technology and tools that help our customers push boundaries, do the unthinkable, and change the world around them. A position we call “Same Planet. Different World.”  Nelson embodies the human side of this position. He represents individuals that overcome challenges and help change the world around them. That becomes the litmus test for what we get involved with then. Our overall marketing strategy focuses on the people who, because of their drive and vison-change and positively impact the world in which we live.

When Renegade started doing social media audits several years ago, it was unclear exactly what we’d find. What we soon discovered is that many companies seem to be making the same mistakes, regardless of company size, B2B vs. B2C or the department leading the charge.  Here is a quick overview of the five most common mistakes we’re seeing, along with some initial thoughts on how to correct these self-defeating faux pas.

Measuring the Wrong Things
The most common metric mistake is emphasizing the number of fans you have over other markers, an approach that is symptomatic of a larger problem: viewing social as another mass medium through which branded content can be pushed. The reality is that it doesn’t matter how large your social footprint is if fans aren’t talking about your content on Facebook (PTAT) and sharing your videos, tweets and or LinkedIn posts.  Enlightened brands use and monitor several more illuminating metrics, including brand sentiment, speed and quality of customer service resolution and engagement (comments, shares, CTRs, etc.).

Too Many Channels and/or Sub-branded Pages
Once the social media bug began to spread across companies, every line extension of a line extension wanted its own Facebook page or Twitter account and/or Pinterest board.  IBM, for example, discovered through an audit that it had hundreds of branded handles on Twitter, and ultimately, they decided to reduce that list to only a few handfuls. Similarly, many brands are stretched too thin, jumping onto new platforms without the resources to keep their content fresh and their fans engaged.  It is better to just do a few channels really well than to be everywhere inconsistently.

Boring Non-Conversational Content
In social settings, brands, like people, get really boring if they only talk about themselves. Of course, you want to sell more products, but unless you have genuine news or product offers, brands should focus on being interesting and interested in their social channels.  Creating content that is interesting requires knowing your target really well—something that is increasingly easier with Facebook analytics platforms. Being interested starts by responding to comments and continues by asking questions.

Social is Isolated in One Department
Since marketers want to market, customer service wants to help and HR wants to recruit, isolating social in one department often limits the multi-functional role that it can play for an organization. This need not be the case. We recently participated in a client’s brand integration workshop and concluded that social media touched the work of seven other agencies, including advertising, media buying, web development, SEO, PR and customer experience, which speaks to the necessity of sharing the social love across your company.

No Social Media Road Map
As the old saying goes, any road looks good if you don’t know where you’re going. And so it goes with social, which sprouted haphazardly within most companies.  Establishing a clear road map for your company is imperative, and an effective road map should assign a purpose to each channel, set up an editorial calendar, create an escalation process for customer complaints and determine staffing needs. Lastly, the road map should define the paid or earned media that will ultimately be required to achieve any kind of scale.

Final note: If you aren’t making mistakes in social, then chances are you aren’t trying anything new. The trick is to turn these mistakes into learning opportunities that will ultimately put you one step ahead of your more cautious competitors. Please let me know if you have any great success stories that started from so-called mistakes–I’d love to make that the follow up story.  (A version of this article ran on SocialMediaToday.com)

Steve Rubel is Chief Content Strategist for Edelman, the world’s largest public relations firm, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he is evangelizing about the importance of content marketing. Given that I happen to agree with Steve and having seen him speak at the Brite ’13 Conference, I was delighted to be able to dig into the topic a bit deeper with him after the fact. As you will see, there’s a lot more to content marketing than publishing a few articles.  In fact, it requires a comprehensive approach including a clear strategy, a diverse blend of media (paid, earned and owned) and writers that know how to start conversations.  But don’t take my word for it, read on…

Neisser: So, what exactly is The Content Imperative?
Rubel: It’s the belief that creating content is no longer optional. Rather, it’s imperative given the significant economic changes that are taking place in both media and, resultantly, marketing. With more ads bought/sold through trading desks, advertising is now far more efficient and effective. This is great for the marketers, but it’s a nightmare for the publishers since it erodes their margins.

Faced with a lack of viable options for generating new/replacement revenues – e.g. subscriptions, significant increases in video views (which have a higher CPM) – media companies are increasingly becoming open to taking sponsored content. Sponsored content is poised to become a significant, possibly even a major new advertising format. And it’s for this reason why it’s now an imperative.

Neisser: When it comes to content marketing, what does success look like in terms of business metrics that a CEO or CFO would appreciate?
Rubel: The metrics of success really depend on the approach. Are you building an asset and trying to attract an audience to you or are you trying to engage the public on other lands? In the case of the former, it’s traffic that leads to sales. In the case of the latter, it’s impressions that create brand awareness and/or potentially lead to traffic and sales.

Neisser: Presumably content marketing provides some kind of competitive advantage.  Can you provide a real world example or two of marketers that have gained competitive advantage via their content marketing efforts?
Rubel: Red Bull is just as known for the content it creates as it is for it’s brand attributes. The same is true for GE (an Edelman client). Both have a content vs a message mindset. One is a consumer brand effort, the other is corporate reputation.

Neisser:  So, does this mean every marketer needs to become a publisher?  And if every marketer in every category is pushing out their own content, at what point does the consumer say, enough already AND/OR at what point does content publishing no longer provide competitive advantage?
Rubel: Not necessarily. There could be a first mover advantage here in some categories. And, yes, it is possible that consumers won’t be receptive. That said, throughout history quality content has prevailed over junk no matter where it comes from. What’s different now is that the playing field has leveled. Brands have a viable way to get their message out and a cadre of media owners ready to help them do so.

Neisser: Creating great content is an art form that not every company can master.  And of course, content is what media companies do really well.  So, how can chocolate (marketing) & peanut butter (media) get together nowadays?
Rubel: Due to the economic underpinnings mentioned above, media companies are increasingly recognizing that content marketing is a viable revenue stream when done right. Many media owners have set up distinct content studios that exclusively serve marketers. They help customers understand their audiences, create content and build deeper relationships. However, they are limited to doing so within their walls.This is why we believe there will be opportunities for agencies like Edelman to integrate different partnerships in context of a broader program.

Neisser: Given an over-abundance of content (aka the WWW) and a dearth of free time (so we all say), should marketers be more focused on quality than quantity, striving to become a recognized curator rather than a prolific purveyor?  
Rubel: Absolutely. Slow is the new fast. Quality is the new quantity. (Although these are old ideas) However, scale is still critical. As is consistency.

Neisser: Content publishing has the potential to be a one way street almost like traditional advertising. Where does social / conversation fit into the content marketing picture? 
Rubel: The media owners seem open to experimenting on their social platforms. The faster we together make this about content as a means to building relationships, the better.

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If Truman Capote was right that “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor,” then you’re in for a feast as I contrast the typical shortcomings of your average CMO with the amazing success of Terri Funk Graham.  As CMO of Jack in the Box, Graham cooked up the outrageously successful “Jack” campaign that began its 18-year run of driving sales and building loyalty. And like the recipes of many world-class chefs, Graham’s 13-step approach is easy-to-digest but hard-to-replicate.  (By the way, if this article looks familiar its because you saw it first on FastCompany.com)

1. Wisk in the Risk
Having the courage to take a risk is table stakes for CMOs.  In Graham’s case, Jack in the Box “needed to do something to revitalize the brand and make it relevant again” after enduring a food poisoning crisis.  So in 1995, Graham helped initiate the Bringing Jack Back campaign, which launched with spokesperson Jack undergoing plastic surgery and taking merciless revenge on the board of directors.  This initial risk born of necessity was a mere taste of the Graham’s on-going willingness to “put a lot more on the line.”

2. Have a Heart
Despite evidence that consumer preference is emotionally driven, many CMOs focus entirely on the rational side of their brand.  In contrast, Graham credits the longevity of the Jack campaign to the fact that “we tapped into the emotional branding side that really gave it a personality that people could connect to.”  Adds Graham, “We were unapologetic about using humor, since it wasn’t going to hurt the brand as long as we were true to who we were.”

3. Don’t Cook by Committee
Though strong agency partners are often behind the initial big idea, it takes masterminds on both sides to keep the other potential cooks out of the proverbial kitchen over the long run.  Graham credits Secret Weapon Creative Director Dick Sittig’s irreverent sense of humor for “rising to the challenge of keeping Jack relevant.”  Graham held up her end of the bargain, proclaiming, “Approval by committee is the death of a campaign—you end up with mediocre work.”

4. A Tablespoon of Trust
No CMO can succeed without the trust of their CEO.  Explains Graham, “Linda Lang [CEO of Jack in the Box] absolutely let me run with it [the Jack campaign] and she always backed it.” However, while Graham “had full support and permission to take risks,” her CEO expected her to “stand tall” if a crisis arose.  This meant that Graham “would have to do all the explaining in the boardroom any time something went a little astray”—a reasonable quid pro quo for this kind of freedom.

5. Nothing Taste Better Than Sales
Some marketers make a distinction between brand-driving and sales-driving ads, only holding the latter accountable.  Graham considers such an approach a luxury Jack in the Box can’t afford, since they are constantly outspent 10:1 by McDonalds. “Everything that we did we also did with the premise of generating sales and driving traffic,” explains Graham.  “We didn’t do funny ads just for the sake of doing funny ads: our goal was always to drive traffic and that’s what we accomplished each and every time,” she adds.

6. Make the Menu
Like the world-class chef who goes to the market to hand pick her ingredients, a master CMO like Graham would not want to be handcuffed by a product controlled by others.  So for the last five years, “Menu” reported to Graham because, as she puts it, “we were able to have the true insight as to what the product was delivering to the customer.”  The added value of having Product report to Marketing is that “everybody is in sync and it is all tied to an overall strategy,” concludes Graham.

7. Spread the Word Inside
Sometimes the internal audience can be as important as the customer to the CMO, especially when a product problem needs to be addressed.  For Graham, the problem turned out to be their signature taco, Jack’s best-selling product that had been “marginalized and optimized over time,” losing both taste and fans along the way.  To fix this, Graham launched the “Respect the Taco” initiative, which renewed internal focus on product quality and gave it the sales driving “attention it deserved.”

8. Flavor It with Fresh
Most established brands walk the knife’s edge between being a reliable staple and yesterday’s leftovers.  To combat this, Graham recognized early on that “in the quick-serve restaurant business, news is what drives traffic,” and, consequently, she used advertising to promote new products, line extensions and product bundles.  The need for CMOs to deliver news via all their communications goes well beyond the QSR world.  Graham remarks, “We all like to try new things—it’s human nature.”

9. Pander to Your Patrons
The relentless search for incremental sales can lead any adventurous CMO astray.  In the pursuit of innovation, Graham cautions, “There comes a point when you’re starting to put products out there that are so far afield that your core customer starts to question your brand.” Graham cited Jack’s Southwest Bowl as a line extension that was too far off-track, while products like the Sour Dough Ultimate Cheeseburger “was more in the sweet spot and more aligned with the focus of our biggest fans.”

10. Stir the Pot
Typically, even the best campaigns lose steam over time. Aware that after 14 years, Jack’s time might be up, Graham put “the biggest brand equity that the company had on the line to see if people still cared:” In a Super Bowl spot, Jack got hit by a bus. And rather than a typical media schedule, the commercial ran just the one time at which point digital and social media took over.  Customers responded famously: “[They] sent cards, teddy bears, flowers and everything you could imagine for Jack’s recovery,” gushes Graham.

11.  Avoid Just Chasing the Course d’ Jour
When it comes to media selection, newish CMOs may be inclined to dismiss television as a dinosaur.  Having witnessed the power of TV year after year, Graham knows better, warning, “The notion that traditional media is dead is quite false.”  That said, Graham also evangelizes about the synergistic power of digital and social, two channels that gave Jack’s bus accident recovery a life of its own after the YouTube video went viral and hatched a campaign within a campaign.

12.  Read the Tea Leaves
With the advent of so-called “Big Data,” no CMO can afford to rely entirely on his or her gut.  And though Graham abhors copy testing as a means of selecting creative, her annual plan included “a number of studies (both quantitative and qualitative) that would give us indicators on how we were doing.”  Not stopping here, Graham knew that since “the message was always tied around a product, it was pretty straightforward for us to tell that the campaign was driving those product sales.”

13. Another Cup of Chutzpah, Please
Inevitably, most CMOs will find themselves in a crisis but few will have the courage to diffuse the situation quite like Graham.  After airing a TV spot that featured a hallucinating young man who ordered 30 tacos (an experience that resonated with Jack’s core target), Graham got wind that “protesters and media were planning to show up on the grass all around our corporate headquarters.” Her solution? “We became a water park in the afternoon and turned on the sprinklers,” dowsing the protest before it started.  Now that’s chutzpah!

Final Note: After a 22-year run at Jack in the Box, Terri Funk Graham recently joined the Board of Directors at Hot Topic Inc., is working with The CMO Club as the Chairman of its President’s Circle and is consulting for HOM Sotheby’s Realty.  Fellow CMOs can meet Terri in person at the upcoming CMO Club Summit in NYC and read my interview with her right here on TheDrewBlog.  As always, if you like what you’re reading, feel free to subscribe and/or share it with friends.

If you’ve been in this business awhile, you have seen many an ad campaign launch strong and then fizzle out in just a year or two. Perhaps this is why I was so bowled over when I heard Terri Funk Graham (at last year’s CMO Club Summit) tell the story of the  “Jack” campaign that is now in its 18th year of productive service for Jack in the Box.  As a student of marketing, I couldn’t help but wonder, how does such a campaign come into being? How do those in charge keep it fresh?  What role does the agency play?  What’s the secret sauce here?

I got the chance to ask Ms. Graham these questions and many more earlier this year and it was then that I realized she is truly a rock star in our industry. During Graham’s long tenure as CMO at Jack in the Box which ended at the end of 2012, the Jack campaign consistently drove product sales, introduced new menu items, helped overcome recessions and bonded with a new generation of fast food consumers.  Graham, as you will soon see, has the courage to take risks not just once but year after year, has the wisdom to stick with one “genius” creative partner and has the curiosity to explore emerging communication channels.  Here is part one of our interview:

Neisser: So tell me how initially the Jack campaign came into beginning back in ’95?
Graham: Well, it came out of the E. coli crisis. So the reality was the company needed to do something to revitalize the brand and make the brand relevant again in the marketplace.  And so it came from a crisis.

Neisser: Which must have been a scary and interesting place to start, right?
Graham: I think that when you’re in a situation like this, you’re willing to put a lot more on line.  And I so I think it actually it drove the ability to take more risks.

Neisser: Really interesting.  So you decided to bring Jack back? 
Graham: Yes, but let’s bring him back in a way that’s relevant and different and will catch attention.  So it was 1995 when we launched Bringing Jack Back.

Neisser: So tell me about those initial ads?
Graham: Well, the very first spot had some controversy around it because it showed Jack coming back.  He had had plastic surgery and he blew up the boardroom because the folks from the boardroom are the ones who blew him up in the ’80s.

Neisser:  I see. A little revenge.
Graham: So he blew up the boardroom and basically reintroduced himself in the marketplace as coming back, better than before with plastic surgery and that he was going to be a big advocate for the consumers. The message was Jack was back and he was going to give fast food customers what they wanted.

Neisser:  So did that seem like an idea that could endure 18 years?   
Graham:  Well, that’s where Dick Sittig, the creative mastermind behind the Jack’s Back campaign, comes in. We constantly challenged Dick to keep Jack relevant, and because he used this sense of humor that was a bit unconventional, described often as irreverent, he kept rising to the occasion and the campaign endures to this day.

Neisser:  So why do you think the ads worked so well?
Graham:  I think what drove the campaign to continue to last is that we tapped into the emotional branding side. I think that often that is not given enough emphasis. We tapped into the emotional side that really gave it a personality that people could connect to.

Neisser:  So how did Jack end up having Dick Sittig’s voice?
Graham: That was actually by accident. That wasn’t planned. When he did the initial pitch, it was in his voice and then when we finally went to casting, we had the actor and we’re putting everything together that we’re looking at all kinds of different voices and the problem was everyone liked Dick Sittig’s voice more than anything that was put in front.  So we decided to go with his voice.

Neisser:  What does it take to keep a campaign like this together for so long?
Graham:  I think there are a couple of things to consider. One is I was always willing to take a risk. So we were unapologetic about who we were. Dick Sittig would present things that would make us feel uncomfortable.  But we knew that it was going to grab attention that it wasn’t going to hurt the brand as long as we were true to who we were. And so it was a combination of being unapologetic about who we were. It was about allowing great creative work to be done. I am not a believer in dealing any sort of pretesting of advertising. We never did anything of that nature. I also think that approval by committee is the death of a campaign, you end up with mediocre work. And, I think that, we truly trusted each other in our work and I think that’s also what helped build that campaign. And so we would constantly challenge each other to keep it relevant.

Neisser:  Very few CMO’s are given permission to take risks.  You must have had a lot of management support?
Graham:  Yes, I had full support and I had permission. Linda Lang absolutely let me run with it and she always backed it. And, there would be situations where I would come up and say, “okay, I have got one that’s going to rile up some folks, prompting phone calls, e-mails and potentially, this all will need to be discussed in the board.” And she would say, “okay, is it worth the risk? And I’d say, “yes.” And she’d say, “I’ll back you, but you need to stand tall.”  So I would have to do all the explaining in the boardroom anytime something went a little astray.

Neisser: What do you think were some of your most risky efforts?
Graham:  Running Jack over  – that was a trying moment. We were essentially putting the most — the biggest brand equity that the company had, Jack, and putting him on the line to see if people cared because if they didn’t care that he got hit by a bus, we were going to be in trouble. So that’s when we had Jack Get Hit By a Bus and of course it proved out to be quite a success and that was in 2009.

Neisser: So how did this part of the campaign unfold?
Graham: We only showed the ad one time and it was on the Super Bowl. And then everything went basically digital and social from there. That was our way of stepping into the whole social media area. So all of a sudden it got millions of views on YoutTube and it was talked about all over the place. We had amazing press and impressions on that. And, we had people sending cards and teddy bears and everything that — flowers, everything that you could imagine for Jack’s recovery. And then we created a storyline. We created multiple ads that followed up afterwards that talked about how he was doing and it became a campaign within a campaign.

Neisser:  So what about the hallucinating kid who sees Jack on his dashboard?  That must of stirred things up.
Graham:  Yes it did. We really wanted to focus on selling our 99-cent tacos. And there is a real following to those tacos. And young people, after they’ve gone to the clubs tend to head to Jack’s for their tacos. And so we played off of that, if you will. And so we had, you know, a young guy in a van come up and he wanted to order as many as 30 tacos. And needless to say, that got quite a bit of attention.

Neisser: Did you end up selling a lot of tacos?
Graham: Everything that we did we also did with the premise of generating sales and driving traffic. I mean we didn’t do funny ads just for the sake of doing funny ads. Our goal was always to drive traffic to the brand. And that’s exactly what we start out to do and that’s what we accomplished each and every time. So in that case, we certainly sold a lot of tacos and we got a lot of buzz about tacos.

Neisser:  You know, I think you told the story of how on that one, some protestors were showing up at your corporate headquarters?
Graham: Yeah, and I turned on the sprinklers. Yes, then the true story — we were going to have protestors and media show up and at the time we had grass all around our corporate headquarters. And it was in the afternoon. And so my way of stalling that was we became a water park in the afternoon and we turned on the sprinklers and we didn’t have any protests that showed up at all the rest of the week!

FYI, After a 22-year run at Jack in the Box, Terri Funk Graham recently joined the Board of Directors at Hot Topic Inc., is working with The CMO Club as the Chairman of its President’s Circle and is consulting for HOM Sotheby’s Realty.  Fellow CMOs can meet Terri in person at the upcoming CMO Club Summit in NYC. 

The term “Big Data” has quickly become the buzzword du jour garnering its own Wikipedia page and showing up in 21 million search results.  But frankly, every time I hear the phrase, it is lumped into a string of buzzwords that makes my head spin, making me wonder, could any self-respecting forward-thinking technology company present their transparent vision without paying homage to the game-changing paradigm-shifting potential of Big Data?

Fortunately for me, I got a chance to hear professor and author David Rogers speak about the genuine potential of “Big Data” (without a single cliche) at the recent Columbia Business School Brite Conference.  Rogers explained how IBM’s Watson (artificial intelligence computer system) has been fed exabytes of medical information that it can sift through in seconds to help doctor’s more accurately diagnose and treat patients.  Another example Roger’s mentioned is Waze, a mobile map app with 30 million users, that gets real world traffic information from users and then processes that information to re-route other users in real time.  Wanting to know more, I caught up with Rogers after the event yielding this informative interview:

Neisser:  Leaders have always been challenged to get the right information to make good decisions.  How do modern leaders take advantage of the excess of data available to find the truth they need?
Rogers: There is actually no excess of data. That’s a myth attached to the term “big data.” Digital data has been growing exponentially since the birth of the computer era. Before that, recorded data grew exponentially since the invention of human writing. I don’t think Napoleon complained that there was “too much data” as he pored over reports of historic battles to conceive his next campaign strategy. What he needed was insight, and the right questions to ask of the data available.

The amazing challenges and opportunities of the Big Data era really don’t stem from the sheer quantity of data. They come from the new kinds of data that we are getting, and our new tools for analyzing them – especially for analyzing unstructured data like video, images, and social media conversations.

My first advice for business leaders is: don’t meet with anyone who wants to sell you some great juicy set of data they’ve got. Don’t be that sucker. Only work with people who want to help you solve a genuine problem, or capitalize on an exciting opportunity, using data.

Neisser: I think it was Einstein who said, “information is not knowledge.”  Can you provide a real world example (or two) of how this data/info is being harnessed by marketers right now?
Rogers: Sure, data is now being used to answer many of the most critical questions that marketers face. Who should I market to? When and where should I spend my budget? Which are my most valuable customers? How should I personalize my offer? What impact did I get from my marketing?

Many of these answers are coming from the domain of predictive analytics. When a customer makes their very first purchase on an ecommerce site, it is now often possible to predict, with decent accuracy, how many more purchases she will make this year, her total spend, and if she fits in the top 5% of your customer base in terms of lifetime profit to the firm. You might be wrong on a given customer, but on average over the entire behavioral segment, you’re quite accurate. That’s extremely powerful.

Neisser: Are these Big Data technologies going to be used just by big companies? Will they pose a competitive disadvantage for small and mid-sized businesses?
Rogers: Not necessarily. One of the key drivers of the big data revolution is cloud computing and the SaaS (software as a service) model. That means that hospitals around the world will be able to start accessing IBM’s Watson, the most powerful natural language processing algorithm in the world, to assist in their cancer diagnostics. Watson is an incredible supercomputer, but your local oncologist will just access it over the web via an app of their tablet.

In the marketing space, the startup Optimizely is providing incredibly cheap entry points for small business to start using its web-based tools to test and gather data on the effectiveness of direct response marketing. You don’t have to be the big boys to start reaping the benefits of the Big Data era.

Neisser: Bringing it back to the C-suite, what do you see as the challenges for leaders adapting their skills, and their teams, to the “Big Data” era?
Rogers: Firstly, formulating the right questions to ask of data will be a key leadership skill for the future. That also means knowing when and how to balance intuition and judgement versus data-driven decision-making.

CMO’s in particular will need to hire some new talent – data scientists who can apply these emerging data tools to unlock value for the enterprise. There will be a lot more math PhDs in the marketing divisions of firms, and not just where you used to find them, in the market research companies. But CMOs also need to train the rest of their team – the creative copyrighters, the ethnographic insight hipsters – to be facile with the world of big data, so they know what questions they should be posing to the data geeks in the next room. It’s really going to be a cultural change as much as skill training.

Neisser:  What about the CEO and strategy? You said at the BRITE ’13 conference that leaders need to see data as a strategic asset. Can you explain?
Rogers: Yes, truly successful leaders will see data not just as a tool to assist decision-making, but as a core strategic asset.

Think about e-tailers like Amazon or media companies like Netflix. They have spent the last few years building amazing data sets about the behaviors and preferences of consumers.  These are incredibly valuable assets, just as much as their hardware, their software, and their licensing and partnership deals. Amazon is using its data assets to not only improve its core retail business, but to offer incredible targeting to marketers. Netflix has used its immense data on what stories, actors, and creative teams its viewers have preferred, to plan and commission entire new TV series, like “House of Cards,” without having to go through the normal process of paying for a bunch of pilot shows and options with no clear idea which one will resonate in the market place. That’s a huge market advantage and risk reducer.   The best leaders in every industry will be those with a strategy for building powerful datasets around their markets and customers – and then leveraging these assets to drive innovation and value creation for customers.

David Rogers is founder of Columbia Business School’s BRITE conference on brands, innovation, and technology, and author of “The Network Is Your Customer: 5 Strategies to Thrive in a Digital Age.” His next book will show why businesses that use big data effectively will survive in an era of disruptive change.  You can find him at www.davidrogers.biz.

Small companies are often founded by innovative individuals who by design or necessity lead their business into new and unchartered territory.  As a company matures that innovative spirit is often squashed under the weight of a fearsome bureaucracy.  One company that seems to consistently break this pattern is Intuit, extending its product line well beyond Quickbooks and TurboTax with a steady series of innovative offerings including SnapTax, a mobile tax filing app.

Kaaren Hanson, VP of Design Innovation at Intuit, believes that the trick is “creating a culture of rapid experimentation” and is speaking about that very topic at next week’s Columbia Business School’s Brite ’13 Conference. As you will see in my interview below, Kaaren is refreshingly honest, reminding those that want to innovate (at any size business), to “fall in love with the problem, not the solution,” that today “leadership is about experimentation” and “innovation is part of everyone’s job.”  But read on. There’s a lot more to this innovation thing than grabbing a white board and gathering the usual suspects!

Drew: Are we currently in the “innovation age” or is innovation simply an imperative for companies looking to thrive (versus survive) in a rapidly changing global economy?   
Kaaren: We have a long way to go. I would say we are entering the “innovation age.” Changes in how we work and think are beginning to take place, but most of the results and impact are yet to come.

Drew: Can you share a specific recent innovation at Intuit and speak to how it came into being?
Kaaren: How about preparing and filing your taxes in less than 10 minutes on your smart phone? That’s a recent innovation from Intuit we call SnapTax. After announcing mobile as a key priority for the company, Intuit CEO Brad Smith was asked by an engineer in an employee chat: “What the hell does mobile have to do with taxes?” He told them he didn’t know, but he knew they’d figure it out. A few months later a small team had an idea.  Intuit gave this small team the freedom and the resources they needed to dream and develop – and they came up with a mobile app to prepare simple tax returns on an iPhone, easily and accurately. That team’s work became SnapTax, which makes it easy to file a simple tax return on a smartphone in the amount of time it takes to find a parking space at H&R Block.

Drew: Does creating a culture of innovation also require a certain tolerance for failure?  Are there ways to mitigate the risks?
Kaaren: Who likes failure? A string of failures and you’re out of business. You have to learn from failure and use it like road signs that direct you to success. Having a culture where people savor surprises is important.  That surprise could be a big upside or a big downside. Intuit’s co-founder Scott Cook says it well: “If there’s something that’s really a big surprise, upside or downside, that’s generally the real world speaking to you, saying there’s something you don’t yet understand.” It’s less about mitigating risks and more about carving out space for people to experiment and learn from failure. One example from Intuit is our Lean StartINs. These are one or two-day events where small groups of employees come to test their ideas for new products or services.

Drew: What are the other big cultural changes required for companies to become more innovative?
Kaaren: Leadership models need to change, especially when it comes to how decisions get made. In the innovation age leadership is much more about Thomas Edison than Dwight Eisenhower. Leadership is about experimentation. It’s no longer about the boss making the decision or judgment. Instead, we  make the decision based on testing the hypothesis and experimentation. This is moving decision-making from the boss’s opinion to enabling the answer to prove itself with customers voting with their feet.

Drew: Innovation often seems to align with the corporate growth cycle—younger companies tend to innovate more than bigger ones either out of necessity or because the culture is younger and less risk averse.  How does the proverbial old dog learn new tricks?
Kaaren: It starts with having a strategy that will fuel growth through big economic and technological changes. Then give employees the freedom to experiment, and ultimately bring to life those groundbreaking innovations that will inspire more innovation.

Drew: Can the big guys do this without creating “skunkworks” or other splinter operations that are not just empowered to innovate but are really required to do so?
Kaaren: At Intuit innovation is part of everyone’s job. If the big guys want to see new ideas come to life at their company, they should democratize innovation. We offer unstructured time to all employees at Intuit, to give great people with great ideas the time and freedom to pursue them. Having an innovation awards program is also a good way to celebrate successes and reinforce the importance of innovation. When it comes to our innovation awards program, we provide the three things that innovators wanted most: recognition allowing access to leaders and other innovators, time to innovate on a project of their choice and financial reward.

Drew: Henry Ford is famous for saying, “if you asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” and Steve Jobs was also a skeptic of the consumer’s ability to recognize the need for what would become a totally new category. How important is consumer input/feedback in your innovation process?
Kaaren: Just listening to what customers say is a waste of time.  Customer Driven Innovation is one of our core capabilities that differentiates us and allows us to deliver solutions that truly change people’s lives. One of our signature methods is something we can Follow Me Homes, observing customers “in the wild” – it may be their homes, coffee shops, or the train.  We notice what and how they are going about their daily lives and then probe deeply to understand the motivations and emotions that drive their behaviors.  These nuggets provide rich material for our innovations.

Drew: Presumably Intuit has had some failures along the innovation road.  Is it true that you can learn as much from failures as you do successes and if so, what have you learned?  
Kaaren: You can certainly learn from failure. It goes back to my earlier comment about savoring surprises. We recently learned this important lesson: fall in love with the problem, not the solution.

Many of Intuit’s customers are small businesses. We had a team that had been exploring opportunities in adjacencies to our payroll business, and found that health coverage is the most important employee benefit. Yet most small businesses don’t offer this benefit because it’s too expensive and too much work to administrate.  The Intuit team took that customer problem and found a way to create a new, low-cost health insurance plan solution. The insurance plan got positive feedback from customers and good overall results in market testing. However, when the team began offering the plan, they only sold four plans in five months. The team then went back to drawing board. They again examined the learnings from customers and added some new members to the team with different perspectives. This led to the team taking insurance out of the solution. Instead, they created a health debit card product to which employers would contribute an amount that they set for their employees to use for healthcare expenses. So the employer sets the cost, and employees get full choice with pre-tax dollars.

A key learning from the failed low-cost insurance plan was, fall in love with the problem, not the solution. In this case the problem still existed. The team needed to have a mindset that as long as they understood the problem, they could be flexible, iterate further and in the end make a product more likely to succeed. The team continues to iterate, and the Intuit Health Debit Card is performing well in a limited market release.

Digital Display is often considered the homely step-child of the advertising family shown up regularly by its precocious cousin Search. So it would stand to reason that Mobile Display would be equally destained.  Well as the analysts like to say, “data trumps opinion” and according to Professor Miklos Sarvary, Faculty Director, Media Program at Columbia Business School, who studied the impact of Mobile Display ads, this emerging channel does work “but only under certain conditions.”  Sarvary will be presenting his findings next week at the Columbia Business School’s Brite ’13 conference and I am delighted to provide a sneak peak of his report via the following interview:

Drew: I love the title of your presentation “The Truth about Mobile Advertising: Does it Even Work?”  Let’s start there.  Does mobile display advertising work?
Yes, our empirical analysis seems to show that it works but only under certain conditions (for certain products).

Drew:  Digital display advertising has a bad reputation already relative to say Search advertising. Why would or should advertisers expect more from mobile display?
The reason is that it is hard to observe systematic effects for display advertising, which is not the case for search advertising. Search advertising is “self-contained”, in the sense that you can have an independent campaign and if the search words are well chosen it generally works. Our research suggests that display advertising may work but only if it is part of a bigger campaign. The role of the mobile display ad is to remind people of the deeper messages of “higher bandwidth” campaigns. We show that this only works for high involvement and utilitarian products. In other words, it is harder to make the case for mobile display ads.

Drew: For marketers considering mobile display advertising, which success barometers should they focus on in order to most satisfied with this particular medium?
Actually, we found that mobile display ads seem to influence many stages of the decision funnel (we could only verify attitude and purchase intentions but I believe that they may pretty much influence the entire decision funnel). This is consistent with the idea that mobile display ads only remind consumers of another campaign transferring richer information. If this is true, then each stage of that campaign might be affected.

Drew:  Can you provide an example or two of successful mobile display campaigns?
Unfortunately not. We are not allowed to reveal the products that we have studied and I don’t have a good specific case study. Moreover, a really successful campaign might not be attributed to mobile ads alone.

Drew: Are there product/services that tend to do better than others on mobile? Are there products/services that simply don’t work at all on mobile display?
Sure. This is the essence of our findings. Specifically, and somewhat surprisingly, high involvement, utilitarian products work better for mibile display advertisemements (as opposed to low involvement hedonic products). Examples like regular cars, expensive durables, heath insurence, financial services come to mind….

Drew:  In theory, mobile display has the opportunity to be incredibly customized based on user behavior and/or location. Did this level of customization play a role in your study?
No. And you are right that this is where the real power of mobile may actually lie. We only studies simple display advertisements – little banners appearing on the screen. What is surprising however, is that a large proportion of mobile ads are still these simple display ads. And the forecasts don’t seem to indicate that the proportion of spending on these is going to decline.

Drew:  Will the advent of larger mobile phones like the rumored iPhone 6 help the mobile display cause?
Yes, I think that there will be a lot of development here. Ads will do a better job at capturing attention, reminding people of other marketing messages etc. Already now, many people count some rich media ads as display ads.

So you may have heard talk of blogger outreach programs and wondered exactly how they worked.  Well its actually as easy as 1-2-3-4:

1. Identify relevant bloggers
2. Send them a flattering note after reading their work
3. Provide them interesting content (preferably words and images)
4. Be patient (your bloggers are probably busy doing other things)

GUEST POST: The Great Social Customer Service Race by Ashley Verrill

Social media has always been about engagement. It’s a place where conversations, networking and relationship building flourish. Unfortunately for business, this is difficult to scale. So many succumb to using the platform strictly for racking up fans and blasting promotions.

But times have changed. Customers now expect businesses to respond when they send messages, tweets or wall posts. It’s up to each business to take advantage of new technologies that help prioritize, route and address these messages efficiently.

Recently, I conducted an experiment to assess whether 14 of the nation’s top brands employ such technologies to achieve social media responsiveness. The test – dubbed The Great Social Customer Service Race – involved sending 280 tweets from four personal accounts, during a four-week period.

We analyzed the percent of total tweets each brand responded to, as well as the time it took them to write back when they did respond. We designed questions that tested specific listening technology features, as well as social response best practices.

Here’s a few lessons we learned from the race that you can use to improve your own social media response.

Listening Technology Should Catch @, no @ and #BrandName

One of the most striking results was the overwhelming lack of response for tweets that did not include the @ symbol and the company’s Twitter handle.

Even though the customer might not be specifically addressing the brand if they don’t use their handle, these messages sometimes present a chance to surprise and delight the customer. Think of it this way: you either capitalize on an opportunity to create a brand advocate, or you risk a negative message traveling further, faster in the wrong hands.

Consider this tweet that didn’t receive a response:

This left a bad impression on me and my followers. Not only that, but competitors could be listening for your brand and capitalize on negative messages about you. Consider this response to a tweet I sent about Bank of America.

Prioritization is Your Best Friend

For large companies, it’s impossible to expect that they respond to everything. But overall, these brands only replied to about 14 percent of the messages we sent. This is frighteningly low. To tackle this challenge, companies should utilize technology that identifies the most important messages and moves them to the front of the response queue.

This is done primarily through prioritization rules that can be customized and programmed into your listening technology. This should include priority triggers such as “thank you,” “angry,” “mad,” “switching,” “buying” and so on. Your team should also spend time finding other keywords that might be more specific to your industry or company.

McDonalds demonstrated during the race that its team was listening for thank you. This tweet received a response in just 13 minutes:

While these important interactions went unnoticed:

Track Your Responses

It’s critical your team have a process for tracking responses once they are prioritized and routed. At one point during the race, we received two responses to the same tweet, one day apart. The first response seemed robotic, and the second didn’t address the question.

A customer service ticketing-type application is one way to achieve this kind of tracking. When a message is received, it becomes a response ticket that is instantly prioritized and routed. Then once it receives a response, it’s removed from the response queue. This is also helpful if the responder that receives the message is busy. Many social listening technologies can instantly re-route the message if it isn’t touched after a certain amount of time.

Consider Customer Clout

A customer’s social activity level or purchase history might be another measure to consider when prioritizing your response. During the race, each of our four Twitter users tweeted the same brand as many as seven times during the four-week experiment. One goals was to see if any of the brands would identify us as active socializers and improve their response time. Not one of the 14 brands did.

To do this, ensure your software records every Twitter interaction with your brand in the corresponding customer’s profile. This allows the next responding agent to quickly see if that customer is a brand advocate or tweeted negatively in the past. Also, program socially integrated ticketing software to increase response priority if a user emerges as an active socializer.

Are You Really Listening?

Customers social media response expectations will only continue to increase. Now is the time to get a handle on your engagement process with the right technology, used in the right way.

Ashley Verrill is a CRM analyst for Software Advice.

Just any case any of the digital / social agencies out there are panicking because they aren’t among the 12 Facebook designated as Strategic Marketing Development Partners, I have one word of advice: don’t.  While this designation is a coup for those 12, the rest of us will be just fine and so will our clients when it comes to providing Facebook-related services.  Part of the reason I can say that with such certainty is that these SMDPs offer self-service solutions that are available to all who seek them, including major digital agencies like Resolution Media.

I talked with Erica Barth, VP of Products & Partnerships at Resolution, about this issue, which we will be talking about again and in greater detail at the upcoming Social Media Insider Summit.  Erica remains bullish on Facebook as a powerful advertising vehicle especially if you are customer-centric.  Enjoy.

Drew: First, please provide a brief description of what your company does and how Facebook fits in.
Resolution Media, an Omnicom Media Group company, is a leading digital agency with operations in 40 countries. Resolution helps brands bond with evolving audiences by providing services in the areas of paid search, search engine optimization (SEO), digital behavior analysis, social media, mobile, local and other complimentary services.

Drew: Can you provide a recent success story that you’ve executed on Facebook?
We used Facebook to generate awareness for a client’s new online product by promoting their organic page posts to mobile and desktop Facebook users.  In particular, mobile newsfeed ads were very successful, generating over 60% of all the “Page Likes” for this initiative.  Overall, Facebook was one of the largest drivers of traffic to this client’s new online product.

Drew: Do you think not being a Strategic PMD has hurt your ad buying and or application development skills?
Resolution Media partners with Facebook PMDs to buy Facebook media on a self-serve basis using the PMD’s technology platform to streamline management, optimization and reporting.  We do place importance on the standing of the API vendor with Facebook, but also look at other factors when selecting our technology partners such as technical support, training, global scale, etc. However, speed-to-market on supporting changes to Facebook’s platform and overall innovation in the space are very critical as well.

Drew: Have you noticed a decline in the usage and/or effectiveness of Facebook apps?   
We help our clients support the promotion of their apps from a media perspective and we haven’t seen our advertisers move away from leveraging them.  However, the biggest limitation we see in driving results today is apps that aren’t developed with the consumer at the center to ensure relevance and a great user experience.  In our experience, simple and entertaining apps tend to perform the best.  It’s really important to understand consumers’ behaviors on different channels and make sure your content and advertising strategy align to those in order to drive success.

Drew: Are you bullish on the future of Facebook applications?  
When done well, one of the greatest strengths of apps is that it’s a great way to develop content quickly and with limited investment, as opposed to a microsite or other channel that could be more time intensive. Limited mobile compatibility and Facebook’s focus on Timeline can make it challenging to maximize traffic to an app, but expect this to continue to evolve as Facebook continues to expand its products to reach both mobile and desktop users.

Drew: How do you see Facebook advertising evolving?   
Facebook has moved in the direction of having its ad formats tied very closely to the organic content that is published, which should help increase the relevancy and effectiveness of Facebook advertising as long as advertisers invest in a solid content strategy that is appropriate for this type of channel.  I think understanding how audiences are evolving and want to be engaged with on each social channel is the foundation that is needed to make any sort of paid amplification effective.

If you happen to be Patrick Toland, your answer to the question “So Your Facebook Developer Isn’t “Strategic”. Does It Matter?” is likely to be “of course” since he is Chief Revenue Officer at Optimal, one of Facebook’s Strategic Preferred Marketing Developers.  That said, Patrick makes a strong case for why the future of Facebook is bright for just about everyone connected with THE social network in our interview below.  (And pardon the shameless plug but why not join us Feb 9-12 at the Social Media Insider Summit where we’ll be delving into this issue and many more while trying to ignore the sunshine of Captiva Island!)

Drew: Can you provide a brief description of what your company does and how Facebook fits in?
Optimal is the leading social ad buying and analytics platform.  We specialize in helping marketers effectively and efficiently reach audiences in real-time, AND we create tools that help companies evaluate their own social presence + their competitors’.

Drew: Some marketers are beginning to question the efficacy of Facebook.  Can you provide a (brief) recent success story on Facebook that you’ve executed?
Recently, we worked with a Fortune 100 Financial Services company, that wanted to find high-value fans / potential customers through social media.  Using a combination of our analytics products and Custom Audiences, we helped them refine their target demographics and increase their fanbase by 350%, while lowering costs by 60%.  Most importantly, we found them people, who were more likely to be customers.

Drew: How has being a Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer that helped your organization?
To become a PMD, an organization needs to meet a certain level of quality, service, and support.  It also means that we have experience working within the industry we are performing sales in.  Being a PMD has been helpful for us & the entire industry because it gives partners and potential customers the knowledge that we have met a certain level of qualifications.   AND, it gives Facebook a level of quality of control because, unlike the Ad Network space in the 2000′s, we have a set of credentials, and we’re ready to work with you.

Drew: As Facebook applications have proliferated and FB usage has moved to mobile devices that don’t support these apps, have you noticed a decline in the usage and/or effectiveness of FB apps?
The usage on mobile is only natural, and although the current trends might seem to the decline in usage for FB apps, this should only be temporary situation.  In the long run, the rest of the ecosystem should catch up.  As this happens, engagement should continue to rise and occur in real-time!

Drew: Are you bullish on the future of Facebook applications?  If so, why and how do you see them evolving?
Yes, of course.  As you mentioned above, FB usage is moving towards mobile devices, and that is something Facebook understands. Applications are being built to adapt to the environment over time, and the future should continue to be promising overall.

Drew: Can you share how you see Facebook advertising becoming more effective?
Of course – the opportunities on Facebook have always been very interesting given the ability to create targeted segments based on actual information that is updated in real-time.   Custom Audiences, Open Graph Targeting are couple great examples of recent developments.  This is much better than the survey based data making assumptions of what people are interested based on what they are viewing, and we feel that everything can only improve, with better ad units, and communication all around.

On February 11th, I will be leading a panel discussion at MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit called “So Your Facebook Developer Isn’t “Strategic”. Does It Matter?”  The controversy, if there is one, began a few months ago when Facebook elevated a dozen of the hundreds of Preferred Marketing Developers (PMDs) to that status of Strategic PMDs.  These folks are being granted insider access to all things Facebook leaving clients to ponder if their non-SMPD agency can remain current and still deliver the goods they need.

To get myself up to speed on this issue, I reached out to my fellow panelists including Lucy Jacobs, COO of Spruce Media, one of the freshly minted SMPDs and in the process realized our discussion was less about the role of SPMDs and more about the potential of Facebook.  As you will see in the interview, Ms. Jacobs is quite bullish on the future of Facebook as an effective and efficient advertising channel.  I suspect you will feel the same after reading her responses.

Drew: Can you provide a brief description of Spruce Media and how Facebook fits in?
Spruce Media provides a streamlined social media-marketing platform.  We optimize customer’s Facebook marketing through sophisticated ad creation, bid management, collaboration tools, page post analysis & amplification. Our platform is offered on self-serve basis or combined with a support team of dedicated account managers and media buyers.  Spruce Media integrates the management of organic, viral, and paid distribution on Facebook, which has never been done before across the social ecosystem.

Large budget advertisers have unique problems. In order to scale up spend; they need bulk ad management that goes beyond Facebook’s Power Editor. Large budgets also demand more sophisticated options than a standard Facebook business account, even if it’s bulk enabled. Finally, advertisers are always looking for intelligence that will give them an advantage over the built-in Facebook capabilities.

Drew: How is Facebook doing in the mobile arena?
Newsfeed mobile CPM is down 10% Q3 to Q4 due to increased inventory with iPhone 5, iOS 6 and Facebook’s ramp up of eligible devices and impressions.  Mobile Newsfeed and Desktop Newsfeed CTRs are up 34% and 49%, respectively from Q3 to Q4 2012.  The slight (10%) decrease from Q3 to Q4 in mobile Newsfeed CPM is more than made up for in increased value to advertisers by the significant rise in CTR and drop in Cost per Click.

The 33% drop in CPC from Q3 to Q4 further opens Facebook up to the $1.6+ Billion industry of mobile ad network advertisers.  The 34% increase in CTRs shows that Facebook has been able to improve the formatting and relevancy of ads delivered in their mobile applications confirming Facebook’s ability to focus on both user experience as well as revenue building product development.

The performance of mobile has plenty of room to grow, especially for price. As for user degradation as more mobile ads are populated, users are more tolerable for in-stream ads since they are either expected or wanted. Given the high engagement rates of mobile ads, it’s not an issue. Accidental clicks on FB are low from click back testing.

Drew:  Is Facebook Making Money on Mobile?
The monetization gap that closed on desktop Internet will ultimately close on mobile Internet too. While users were initially skeptical of Facebook’s mobile revenue opportunity, the company is now on track to generate 20% or more of advertising revenue from mobile in 4Q2012, up from just 3% in 2Q. The mobile Newsfeed ads pricing at a significant premium to Facebook’s platform average and believe that over time Newsfeed plus all mobile ad formats may comprise around 60% of total advertising revenue.

Drew: Are you bullish on the future of Facebook applications?  If so, why and how do you see them evolving?  
Yes, I am very bullish on Facebook applications. They are a logical next step in the evolution of the Facebook Marketing cycle into Amplification. Open Graph is proven to work well as well as new ad units such as mobile app installs.

Drew: Are you also bullish on the future of Facebook advertising?  
Yes I am very bullish on Facebook. Spending outlook for 2013 is positive:

• Advertisers are actively discussing budgets for ’13 and so far the outlook is positive. Most of the brand advertisers expect to increase spending on FB in 2013.
• The advertising activity appears to be sustainable as the objective is being transitioned from fan acquisitions to engagement and amplification. FB’s new targeting tool, Custom Audiences, is a game-changer since advertisers can match online identity with offline CRM and deliver relevant ads on an individual basis.

Drew: What are some key things to watch for in 2013?
Custom Audience - The game-changer in digital advertising. FB is the only platform that enables accurate individual targeting on a large scale, shifting FB advertising to a very sustainable business model of reach and frequency.

Ad network - This initiative will expand FB’s reach of ad impressions into third-party websites. The social network has a unique advantage since social identities can travel across devices from mobile to desktop. Existing PC cookies cannot be tracked in mobile currently. When users hop from a smartphone to a PC, the tracking gets disconnected.

Multi-touch attribution - This is a longer-term positive industry development for FB. The attribution model is starting to shift from last-click to multi-touch, recognizing the assist social media provides at the early part of the consumer-purchasing journey through awareness. By doing so, social media, especially FB, should get more media allocation in the future.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a sleigh somewhere, chances are you’ve noticed the annual gathering of sloppy Saint Nicks otherwise known as SantaCon.  At first glance, it’s simply a raucous day of naughty carols, random gifting and extreme silliness.  But dig a bit deeper, and you’ll find this highly social event is a near-perfect metaphor for the state of social media.

A Global (and Subversive) Phenomenon
Possibly started by subversive artists in Copenhagen way back in 1974, SantaCon has since expanded to 37 countries and 270 locations.  Social media is even more ubiquitous, touching just about every country around the globe and, perhaps just as subversive, playing a part in protests in at least 5 countries via Twitter.

Emphasis on Crowd Size
Often referred to as a bawdy flash mob, SantaCon is all about getting together with thousands of your so-called “friends” as per the credo “the more, the merrier.”  Similarly, there is an emphasis among some ambitious social marketers to grow their social footprints without regard for the quality of the fans or levels of engagement.

All About the Pictures
A quick search for the hashtag #SantaCon on Instagram reveals over 43,000 photos from last Saturday’s gathering.  With social media, pictures are playing an even more prominent role, increasing engagement on Facebook and Twitter and, of course, driving the success of newer platforms like Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram.

No One is in Charge
SantaCon is a totally grassroots affair, taking different forms in different cities on different dates and even having alternate names like Santapalooza and Santarchy.  Social media at its best is equally free-form, with consumers driving content development, platform choice and desired interaction with brands.

Mobile
SantaCon revelers rarely stay in one place on the big day, making for an ever-morphing, highly mobile parade.  And so it is with social media, as smart phones and tablets become the dominant means of consuming and contributing social content.  Recognizing this shift, jolly marketers will want to jump on the mobile bandwagon.

A Whole Lot of Fun
At its best, SantaCon is a day of harmless fun in which red-suited revelers share good cheer with strangers and friends alike.  Similarly, social media is an opportunity for marketers to have fun, engage with their fans, align with their passions and remind us all that people ultimately choose to do business with people they like.

It Can Get Sloppy
At its worst, SantaCon is a day of out-of-control drunks that get banned from bars and end up being anything but nice.  Social media shares this potential for sloppiness, as consumers feel free to rant about brands on Twitter and Facebook, write nasty reviews on TripAdvisor and even produce negative videos for YouTube.

Not Going Away
Despite cries from Gothamist to end SantaCon in NYC, this mistletoe-rich movement is clearly unstoppable.  The gift is out of the bag, so to speak.  For marketers, the “gift” of social media is potentially one that keeps on giving, creating the opportunity to turn detractors into proponents and fans into true advocates.  And you don’t even have to don a red suit!

So ho ho ho and Happy Holidays to you all.

Kip Wetzel, Executive Director of Escalations and Social Media Strategy at Comcast, makes a strong case for social media as a customer service channel.  I saw Kip speak at the recent Social Media World Forum (SMWF) and was lucky enough to follow that up with a lengthy interview.  Here is part one of that interview in which Kip explains the notion of escalation, why it is important to treat all customers equal (even Bruce Springsteen) and how Comcast’s approach has evolved over the last few years.

Drew:  For the readers at home, can you explain what escalations are?
We have an operation that spans our entire reach of customers and our entire footprint of where we operate.  Escalations for us are when we are at a point with the consumer that we need to go beyond a traditional front-line customer service representative.  That’s typically a level of frustration that something hasn’t worked or something hasn’t gone right.

Also on the other edge of that sword for us, it’s an opportunity to really make a difference for that customer.  When we get into an escalation scenario, we are trying to ensure that we can get the most rapid support for a customer based on something that may have been habitual, a question that hasn’t been answered, and an item they want addressed.  We have a team that’s very dedicated and a very coordinated effort across all of the markets that we serve to ensure that we can get that resolution in place for that customer.

Drew: So how does social media fit into escalations?
The social media efforts that we do are a part of that escalation program.  We don’t have separate stand-alone social media policies, escalation procedures and communications standards.  We found that the standards, policies, and processes that we have in place already for the rest of our business translate well to social media.  For us it was a nice way to extend our service model; to go out and meet customers where they were operating and leverage things that already worked for our business and apply it to Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and Pinterest.

Drew: So let’s imagine that Bruce Springsteen is having a problem with service—does the escalation process change?
Let me answer that by giving you one bit of context to how we operate.  I’m a part of our national customer operations team, which means without the big title there means we are in our customer service department.  A lot of other brands operate their social care strategy through comms, PR, or brand marketing.  We’re very proud to operate this group out of customer service and our NCO group.  Because of that, the answer to your question is no.  We don’t think people should be treated differently.

Regardless of how I feel about Thunder Road or Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen is a paying customer just like his neighbor down the road who happens to be a schoolteacher, an accountant, or a lawyer.  From the care perspective, things like cred and clout and influence or status — from a care perspective, we operate under the guise that everybody as a paying customer should get the level of service that they deserve as being a subscriber to Comcast products and services.  That’s the way that we operate because of our operation in customer service.

Now, some variation on that is that the way that we might evaluate or triage that situation with Mr. Springsteen or other people is what is the triage of the impacting situation?  If Customer A has a DVR that didn’t record Dancing with the Stars, but Customer B is a part of a commercial power outage where an entire portion of our service area is out, we will triage the situation differently; the severity of the impact of the situation to our customer base.  Regardless of where Mr. Springsteen resides, we want to evaluate the situation itself, not Mr. Springsteen’s status on social media platforms.

Drew: Do your marketing folk have different thoughts on this?
Do my peers in product marketing or sales or content, acquisition content strategy — do they have a different feel of how influence or status or Kred score or Klout score should be considered?  I would argue that they should.  That’s inherent to their goals for our business and their respective operating strategies working for Comcast, but in the care world no.

Drew: How has your approach for using social for customer service evolved over the last year or two?
First, it’s been 4 ½ years since our first Tweets went out and after a significant amount of listening and observation, we’ve really focused on putting some strong operations in place.  That comes in the form of better staffing, better service and hours of operation.  With the same number of people, we are able to cover more platforms and more days and hours of the week.

We standardized our presence.  Over those first couple of years, we had a lot of dabbling here and there with different names, different images, and different profile pictures.  We’ve really tried to ensure that we standardized the way that people engage with us.  And we’ve made sure we have a verified presence across multiple platforms, really driving home that we are the Comcast team and we are there to provide support.

Drew: Have the tools changed as well?
We’ve really started to expand our use of advanced technologies to listen, engage, and measure our work with customers.  The early days it was just a byproduct of Twitter and South by Southwest 2008.  The tools didn’t exist.  Now that we’ve got advanced tools to help us listen and track things like sentiment, affinity, trends and topics, and keyword analysis, we’re matured to a point now that we’re looking at our key performance indicators.

Drew: Are you getting better at measurement as well?
I think very soon our ever-maturing data set will allows us to get more insight into what our social operation is.  We can actually start marrying that and coupling that with existing data sets that we have across our business.  The role that data plays to help us understand our operation; it continues to be an ever increasing important part of what we do and how we do it.  Then starting to really get smart about what the impact of what we are doing.

We also have expanded, right?  We’ve not expanded necessarily the team size, but we are really focused on being in touch with the players in be it Silicon Valley, be it Canada.  These new tools and platforms that are coming — I think as you’ll know from the Comcast Cares story we had to sort of play catch up, which was there were a number of customers talking about us, asking questions, posing items, and we weren’t there.  We had to play a bit of catch up.  We were sort of meeting customers on the platforms that they were already active on.  To subtly change in that we’re trying to do though now is we’re trying to greet those customers.

Drew: Do you continue to look at new social platforms?
As these platforms are evolving, we want to greet them.  We want to have a presence there as customers adopt these tools, rather than having to play catch up like we did in the early days.  That not only shows to our customers that we’re there, we’re active, we have a presence with them, but it also demonstrates our overall — I mean as a brand and a company to be sort of an innovative, technology-focused company.  That’s been a big part of our maturity.

As you may have guessed by now, I talk to as many smart marketers as I can to gather content for articles and insights that inform Renegade’s work on behalf of our clients. So it was a double treat to catch up with Stephanie Anderson who recently became SVP of Marketing for Time Warner Cable Business Class and get some of her insights on B2B marketing, about which she is both a relentless student and expert practitioner.  I think you’ll find Stephanie’s thoughts on the use of data, instinct, TV and social media quite enlightening.

Drew:  There is a lot of talk about turning B2B marketing into a science through the use of data, marketing automation tools & CRM.  Do you see that trend continuing and if so, do you see any risks of relying too much on this approach?
Knowing your customers and prospects will never go out of style.  I think marketing is 60% science, 30% creative and 10% gut.  The science part is getting more airplay now mostly due to the incredible measurability of the web.

Drew: Is there any room for intuition and “gut” decision making in marketing?  If so, in what circumstances. If not, why not?
Yes, gut matters – or maybe it is more “experience” that counts.  Mostly, I would say you need to keep in the forefront whether or not there is anything you are saying or doing in your content that conflicts with your Brand and what you stand for as a company – that is where gut comes in the most – it may not always be obvious -and always try to make sure you understand the possible unintended consequences.  I always say “if you do the right things for the right reasons, you will get the right results!”

Drew:  Digital is getting more and more of the marketing spend, especially search and retargeting.  Do you see that trend continuing and are there any limitations here in terms of brand building and customer relationship building?
The web is a very interesting place – it is called the web for a reason.  There are so many puts and takes you could burn through a lot of cash and resources trying to track down a single customer.  The most important lesson I have learned is that you need to think like your customers and non-customers and show up where they are most likely to engage with you – being careful not to annoy them.

Drew:  Does TV advertising still work?  If so, what role do you think it has to play in B2B marketing? 
TV has a role, but it is getting more and more difficult to measure.  Cable actually makes TV advertising more targeted and relevant, but it is still challenging in B2B to determine how a customer really got to your door.  The old way of extracting this information was to measure phone calls by having a discreet phone number on all of your materials.  Now, it is challenging because the web site is the most memorable – but how did they get to you? Because they saw your ad on TV and then searched for you?  Even though it’s never one single tactic that delivers a prospect to your door, we tend to measure and budget with that in mind, particularly when it comes to TV whether cross channel or broadcast.  The bottom line is that you have to be in the game, to win the game and if no one knows you in your category, then you can’t be considered.  We use TV for consideration and awareness and locally for lead generation.  No signs of stopping.

Drew:  Social media has been all the rage on the B2C front.  Do you see similar opportunities for B2B brands to participate and leverage social media?
Just as the iPad and BYOD is the way of information technology in businesses, so goes social media.  I prefer to think of it as social commerce on the B2B side – it’s just doing business the way that is most natural for people.  Businesses especially rely on communities and external resources to help drive their decisions – particularly in the communications and technology or IT types of decisions.  If you think about it, User Groups in the technology world have been around for 30 plus years – so basically taking that on-line or using methods of communication that make it easy to reach others and collaborate on topics in support of business decisions is ideal.

Most of the time on these pages when I’m talking about Social Business it seems I’m quoting someone from IBM (see 2012 interviews with Jeff Schick and Ethan McCarty).  Well, given the supreme importance of this topic, I’m happy to report I caught up with Jeremy Epstein, VP of Marketing at Sprinklr, a company that will be sharing its expertise with attendees at this week’s Social Media World Forum.  Jeremy offers a clear road map for companies looking to take social global.

Drew: There are a lot of definitions of social business out there. What’s yours?
It is when you are fully engaged in conversations to establish meaningful relationships with your customers, prospects, and community.  There are three criteria that must be met:

1. No conversation is left behind, no matter if you are getting 10, 100, 1000, or 10,000 messages a day
2. You add meaningful value when you speak. Each interaction results in your customer feeling like you care more about them this time than in the last interaction.
3. The business speaks with one voice at all times, so the customer always knows that it is your business engaging with her in the way you want her to be treated.

Drew:  What role does Sprinklr play in helping companies become a social business?
Well, first off, I should be clear that we only play this role for very large companies. Over 80% of our clients have $1 billion in revenue and we’re designed specifically for their unique needs.  We’re not designed for SMB or solo practitioners. We provide a SaaS platform and related services to make the  3 criteria I shared above possible across teams, functions such as Marketing, Sales, PR, Corporate Communications, HR, etc, geographies, and division. As you know, social touches every single part of the organization. It’s not constrained to one part such as Marketing, so enterprises require one comprehensive platform to help all of these disparate teams coordinate in an effective, fast, and secure way. That’s where we come in. We enable large brands to be social at scale.

Drew: Can you walk me an example of a client that has used your service to become a social business?
While I would love for Sprinklr to take all the credit, we’re just a piece of the puzzle, working with some of the largest, most innovative social companies out there, so let me share one from a very large, global electronics company that wanted to roll out a social strategy in 70 countries.

All told, this is global social media deployment that ran to a cost tens of millions of dollars. It had 5 key steps. Here’s what they did:

1. Built a complete a strategy map outlining the business objectives and the social activities to get there.
2. Outlined the roles and responsibilities at the corporate, regional, and local levels.
3. Set up an operations plan that covered things like rules of conduct, best practices, and policies for sunsetting/deactivations of accounts.
4. Created an online brand style guide.
5. Set up a reporting infrastructure and taxonomy so they knew which social and which business metrics would matter.

All of this led to an RFP where Sprinklr was chosen as the company to power the global social infrastructure.What we did  then is take all of the requirements, roles, policies, brand elements, and reporting templates and customize our platform for them,  so they could quickly execute their plan. You can see the full story here.

Drew:  Looking at your own marketing, what role does social play for Sprinklr?
It’s the primary way that we identify and cultivate our prospects. We are obsessive about the three criteria of the social business. We also measure the effectiveness of our social content religiously, optimizing it by audience, channel, and more.  We’re not quite there yet, but we’re on the road to making sure that Social is baked into everything we do.

Drew:  Do think there will be a new title next year like Chief Social Business Officer and is this even a good idea?
Yes, there probably will be and it could be a great idea.  Or a lousy one.  If the company appoints a CSBO (there, I’ve already done the acronym, so it must be legit!) and the rest of the exec team says “oh, great, I don’t have to worry about social,” then it will fail.

However, if the CSBO becomes the driving force for integrating social as a cultural shift supported by the right people, processes, and technology, then it will work. Either way, it’s temporary.

Drew: Looking ahead to next year, do you anticipate any new challenges for marketers in social?
Absolutely. A few of them.

1. What happens when Engagement Works:  If you are successful in creating conversation with your audience, at some point, you are going to have a volume of messages that you can’t manage, but people expect a response. What do you do do then? This is the challenge of scale.
2. Cross-function and cross-division collaboration becomes mandatory: Marketers will have to be more agile in working with others outside of their area in order to quickly come together and address customer concerns.
3. Connection Social profile data to existing CRM data: It’s going to be critical to connect the two worlds. We’re advising clients to mimic the taxonomy of the CRM system in the Social Media Management System. Once you do that, when the time for the integration happens, you’ll be ready.
4. Measurement and Impact: The same conversation about the ROI of Social will occur. Some of the innovators, however, are figuring it out.

Drew: Finally, what kinds of trends are you seeing (through your data) that marketers can capitalize on next year?
One trend we’re seeing is the investment in “Upskilling of employees”—training people to participate in the conversation economy in a way that will help, not hurt the brand. This gives marketers force multipliers in terms of achieveing their objectives through their co-workers as brand ambassadors.

Another is in LinkedIn for b2b marketing. We recently became one of the first four social media management partners for LinkedIn and our clients are very excited about exploring how to use it for b2B relationship building and lead gen..through a comprehensive platform, so they can compare apples:apples. We’ve been very impressed by the LinkedIn partnership and think you’re going to see them start to break the perception that there are the “big 3 of Twitter, FB, and YouTube” and then the rest. Global templates with local empowerment for App development.

We’re seeing marketers have a much larger range of tools at their disposal as global teams set up templates for social apps. My suggestion would be to become familiar with the concepts of Social app development and their capabilities. Even if you don’t know how to build one, you’ll benefit from understanding that.  Some practitioners will become quite savvy at drag/drop app dev and drive meaningful results from them.

Some might think that the phrase “Social Brand Management” is a multidimensional oxymoron given the prevailing notion that companies have ceded control of their brands to the consumer AND that social may be the last place brands can be managed. Fortunately, Social Brand Management is among the many misconceptions being tackled at this week’s Social Media World Forum in NYC.  Nicole Bohorad, Senior Manager, Social Media Marketing at Capital One is on the Social Brand Management panel and as you will see from the interview below, provides some terrific insights into how her company is grabbing the reins from the proverbial marauding hordes.  (And at the risk of killing the suspense, I did not ask Nicole, “what’s in her wallet?” but be my guest if you’re coming to the conference!)

Drew: So what exactly is “social brand management?”
We see this as guiding people’s perception of our brand, and the ability to direct consideration for and involvement with the brand, through the use of various social channels and social technologies.

Drew: How do reconcile the common desire to “manage” social and the desire for social to be “organic?” Does one necessarily negate the other?
Of most importance, we focus on social being organic. We know our customers recognize Capital One’s brand equity in being clever & funny, and this is something that compells them to share stories about our core values – best value, ease of use and great user experience. To do this effectively, however, we must manage the process by amplifying reach to our most active and supportive customers on social. They then act as evangelists for other customers who are not as loyal or new to the brand. We do this through tactics, including content calendar strategy, social listening and moderation, public relations and advertising to inform our content around topics customers want to hear.

Drew: Can you give me an or two example of how Capital One is “managing” social right now?
We are actively participating in moderation through engagement with customers in live Tweeting events, such as with History Channel’s Mankind The Story of All of Us. This series includes a focus on the creation of commerce and money, so it gives us an opportunity to bring value to the story and engage with fans of the show while talking about our expertise.

We are also monitoring the success of our content performance on Facebook and develop page post ads that highlight the most engaging content. We’ve found, specifically, that our focus on travel interests does quite well, so by including this content in ads, our fans are able to endorse their interactivity for their friends to notice in their newsfeeds and take interest.

Drew: Has social matured this year and if so how has that effected your approach to social?
Yes, it has. Key channels, such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, have started to really differentiate their platforms across user base, content posting strategy, reason for using the channel, and accessing the channel (such as mobile). This has caused us to fine-tune our content with a focus on using each one for a specific purpose, such as a real-time news and interests for Twitter, and travel memories and sports stories (around our NCAA experience) on Facebook.

There has also been a greater focus on analytics measurement, where channels have to prove their effectiveness – not only to show how content and ads drive actions and business back to our site and product use, but also how the channels are playing a greater role in affecting media consumption – for example, how Twitter conversations are affecting consideration for brands on TV.

Last, greater linkable search capabilities, such as Google’s ability to tie Google+ with YouTube, and social listening tools that tie into social channels, have proven to add a critical new layer that informs product insight and organic content development.

Drew: Did you try any emerging platforms this year and if so, how did it go?
We launched our Google+ page in May with a focus on travel (tied to our Venture Card), as we saw this was an area ripe for content development. Google recognized the quality of our posts and featured us in their Travel Circle, giving us exposure to more fans with a passion for travel. This has helped us become a financial category leader on the channel, with more than 80,000 featuring us in their circles.

Drew: Capital One has expanded well beyond credit cards in the last few years. What are the tricks to managing social with so many lines of business under one brand name?
Not only that, we have extended our social presence in both Canada and the UK. Luckily, we have strong brand standard guidelines that help guide us in the way that the brand is represented consistently on social channels. We also have a strong brand personality stemming from our TV campaigns that we work to maintain across channels. But we don’t have all the answers yet, and we are continuing to test and learn as we go.

Drew: What’s on your wish list for 2013 in terms of social brand management?
We are going to be refining our brand engagement approach on core social media channels. We want to monitor analytics more closely to define how we attain key brand and business metrics from social content. We also want to test new channels to see where we can extend our brand conversation with consumers. We hope to look at how social can affect brand affinity when coupled with TV viewing behavior. Last, we want to refine our approach to social advertising as it relates to building the most loyal customer bases on social channels who can share our message.

Thanks for reading.  If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribe to TheDrewBlog.  

Today marks the 3^rd annual Small Business Saturday, a day in which the nation is encouraged to “shop small” and, in fact, does just that. Nestled between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, SBS is a powerful example of “Marketing as Service” from American Express, a company that has been taking this approach successfully for the past 25 years.

But look carefully at Small Business Saturday, and you will also see a work week full of marketing myths busted, one day at a time, before you can tweet, “#MarketerMonday.”

Monday’s Child: Big Ideas Take Time
Most marketers are nothing if not deliberate, taking months to conceive, strategize and ultimately execute their ideas, big or small. And given the audacity and complexity of establishing SBS as a new holiday, it is reasonable to assume a lengthy planning cycle, right? Wrong. According to Scott Krugman, Director of Communications at American Express, SBS went from idea to execution “in a matter of a few weeks.”

Tuesday’s Child: It’s About My Brand
Naturally, marketers want to put their brand at the center of their communications, expecting it will be the shortest route to an effective program.  With SBS, American Express asserted the counterintuitive brand position: “It’s more than just about us.” By putting their customers at the center of an entire program, AmEx “created a solution to help spur more business for small businesses, and small business owners really took to it,” Krugman reported.

Wednesday’s Child: Social Media Just Happens
In some naïve marketing circles, there is a wishful notion that social media success (like its cousin “viral success”) just happens organically. A careful look at SBS, which became huge on social media by any measure, including reach and engagement, reveals that AmEx kickstarted every social channel with paid media, along with a carefully orchestrated PR effort that generated a surge of earned media. Facebook even threw in free ads for small businesses on their network to encourage even more social promotion.

Thursday’s Child: Partnerships Must Be Controlled
Some marketers spend as much time trying to control partnerships as they do setting them up. AmEx took the opposite approach, allowing anyone and everyone to participate in SBS. Explained Krugman, “For small businesses to participate, they don’t have to accept the American Express card.” Seventy five other companies, including FedEx, Facebook and Delta, ended up joining the “shop small” movement in its second year and many more will be doing so in 2012.

Friday’s Child: Doing Good Doesn’t Pay Out
Mention a “do good” program and most marketers will discourage discussing its ROI, as if ROI is a bad thing that could somehow diminish their altruistic intentions. Even AmEx’s Krugman tried to convince me that as long as small businesses felt good about SBS, that was good enough for AmEx. He let slip, however, that “card transactions were up 23 percent for merchants that accepted the [American Express] card” on SBS 2011. Sounds like ROI to me.

Bonus Myth: Congress Can’t Agree on Anything
It isn’t news that the U.S. Congress is more divided politically now than at any other time since the Civil War, which makes their unanimous resolution to support Small Business Saturday all the more remarkable. In fact, officials in all 50 states embraced SBS, and President Obama’s personal effort to “shop small” on SBS in 2011 also made the evening news.

Final Note: In addition to talking to American Express’ Krugman, I also caught up with Denise Yunkun, FedEx’s Director of Alliance Marketing, who helped me get a sense of the program’s scale. Yunkun reported that in 2011, “More than 500,000 small business owners leveraged an online tool or promotional materials for SBS.”  You can find my enlightening interviews with Krugman (part 1 & part 2)  and Yunkun right here on TheDrewBlog. (If this article seems familiar, you must have seen it on MediaPost.com).

The Social Media World Forum (SMWF) hits NYC next week with an exciting list of speakers and topics.  High on my list of “must sees,” is a case study on Pinterest being presented by Morgan Baden, Director of Social Media & Internal Communications at Scholastic Inc.  I was delighted to be able to catch up with Morgan and get a sneak peak of Scholastic’s approach to Pinterest and how they have been able to gain so much traction in a relatively short time frame.  Given Pinterest’s recent announcement of more brand-friendly pages, now is as good time as any to increase your knowledge of this rapidly growing channel.

Drew: I counted 55 boards on the Scholastic Pinterest page. That’s a lot more than most brands. Can you give me a brief overview of how you got this far?
We have some passionate Pinterest fans in Scholastic who have led the charge, and once we got started and were able to see the reaction our content was getting, we were hooked. Every group within Scholastic has visual content that our customers are interested in seeing, so we work with the various businesses to make sure our Pinterest Boards reflect what Scholastic is all about: getting kids to learn to read and love to read, and supporting the educators and families who inspire them along the way. There’s so much going on at Scholastic in any given day – author visits, events and conferences, new book releases, new product releases, character anniversaries – and we’re such a visual brand that the possibilities for Pinterest seem endless.

Drew:  Some boards must be more popular that others.  Which ones are really working well for Scholastic and why?
We watched closely as the voice of Pinterest began to establish itself, and then we adjusted our strategy and experimented with different Boards to reflect the platform’s general trends. Our quote Boards are a good example – we noticed that inspiring or funny quotes tend to resonate with other Pinners, so we worked with our editorial teams to create and Pin quotes from Scholastic books. But our most successful Boardstend to be the educator-focused ones. Teachers are using Pinterest to find ideas for their classrooms, so we regularly create Boards full of resources to help teachers – things like printables, resources for the Common Core State Standards, and classroom craft ideas.

Drew:  What role does Pinterest play in your marketing mix? Do you see it as experimental or have you attached specific marketing objectives to Pinterest at this point?
Like all of our social media efforts, Pinterest does play a role in our marketing mix. Book covers are linked back to The Scholastic Store Online and our other resources are linked back to scholastic.com so we can easily track sales and site traffic. But our social media strategy overall is more focused on using the tools to communicate with our customers, not necessarily to market to them, and the same holds true for Pinterest. Our customers were already on there, talking about us and sharing our content, and it made sense for us to join them and further tap into their excitement.

Drew: Have you made some changes to your approach to Pinterest over the last 6 months and if so, what/why?
We have! We’ve been on Pinterest for more than a year now and we’ve moved slightly away from the experimentation phase and more into an analytics phase. Pinterest doesn’t feel like “the new thing” for us anymore – it’s an established platform now, and as such it’s been integrated into our overall communications and marketing strategies. We are always thinking of new ways to use it, though – every day we uncover opportunities within our business to use Pinterest in new and different ways, to reach new and different fans.

Drew: What advice would you give to a brand manager just getting started on Pinterest?
Once you’ve established your corporate strategy and goals, the sky’s the limit! I would encourage brand managers to experiment, Pin consistently (no one likes a stagnant Board), and cross-promote your Pins on your company’s other social accounts.

Drew: Do you have a wish list for Pinterest in terms of new things you’d like to see on the platform?
We’re really excited about their new Business pages, which we hope will solve some of our concerns. And ultimately, I’d love to see some sort of umbrella page for brands like Scholastic, so our other affiliated but separate Pinterest accounts could be tied together on the platform.

Drew: Are there any other emerging platforms you’re trying this year or plan on trying next year?
Our newest social media account is Instagram, which we’re having a lot of fun with (along with everyone else!). Looking forward, I could see us experimenting with Path or Fancy.

This is part 2 of my extensive interview with Scott Krugman, Director of Communications at American Express on Small Business Saturday.  In this part, Krugman share’s how the program evolved from year 1 to year 2 and offers some hints as to what we can expect to see later this month (November 24th to be exact).  I realize this is a lot of ink to dedicated to one program but if you are a student of marketing, you’ll want to read on because in this you’ll find the secrets to truly great marketing programs–create a win / win / win  situation for consumers, customers & partners and ultimately your own brand will triumph.

Drew: How did the program evolve in Year 2 (2011)?
Year 1 was like catching lightning in a bottle. I think the results kind of blew the expectations out of the water. Year 2, we knew there was an opportunity for it to be bigger. For that to be the case though, it really needed to be more than just about American Express. And I think you saw more corporate partners were engaged. FedEx had a $1 million investment in “shop small” gift cards for consumers. They really did a great job in getting the word out and really mobilizing consumers. There were a number of public officials that rallied around the day and really encouraged their constituents to shop. There was such a groundswell of grassroots support that it went all the way to the White House.

Drew: So, even politicians jumped on the SBS bandwagon?
That’s it, exactly. It’s amazing: in a year where we saw Republicans and Democrats fight over everything—whether it’s the debt ceiling, deficit, you name it—the one thing they could agree on was that, in this particular case, November 26 would be Small Business Saturday. The Senate passed a unanimous resolution making that day Small Business Saturday. But it takes more than just government to encourage people to shop because, let’s face it, with their Congressional approval rating, that’s not exactly the watermark to get consumers to shop.

Drew: Back to Year 2 and the program’s evolution…
We knew that the amplification of the “shop small” message on the day was crucial. So in order for this thing to really be successful, small business owners really needed to own the day. And that meant making special offers around it. So that’s where the Small Business Saturday tool kit comes into play. It allows small business owners to do a number of things. It allows them to do things that maybe some businesses take for granted like help to create a Facebook page. I believe we did the free ads. We allowed them to print out in-store signage because not everything is done via online.

Drew:So, let’s talk about some of the big differences between Year 1 and Year 2 and the increase in partners.
I think there were more than 50 corporate and digital partners (including Verizon, Costco, Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, Google) as a part of Small Business Saturday in Year 2. Again, that really more than doubled-down on the commitment and what this day became in Year 2 versus Year 1. But you combine that with the support from public officials, the support from local, state and national groups—whether it’s the SBA, the NFIB (National Federation for Independent Businesses), convention and visitor bureaus from various cities—all of this culminated.

Drew: So, on an earned media basis, the exposure must have been unbelievable?
Year 2, there were close to 10,000 [media] placements and the total circulation was around 1.7 billion.

Drew: Did people end up spending more or simply shift spending from big companies to small businesses?
We’re not in the business of picking winners and losers here, right? The message was, during the holiday season, “Hey, don’t forget to allocate some of that spending to small businesses and discover what’s so special about them.” That’s what happened. Consumer spending was up for the holiday season.

Drew: Back to Year 2. Why did it work so much better?
There was more awareness of the day. More small business owners were able to leverage the tools in the tool kit that they didn’t have Year 1 to promote the day. So there was definitely a stronger message to the consumer. And the consumer was better able to mobilize. Through the Shop Small Facebook page, a lot of the merchant offers were loaded in, so consumers could find merchants that were close to them through this map and find their offers. I think there were more tools for consumers to make it easier for them to shop small.

Drew:So, at this point, do you now say, okay, we’re going to create an entity called SmallBusinessSaturday.org and let it run itself?
Small businesses at this point are free to promote SBS in any way they want, right? It’s their day. So, like I said, we will always support it. No matter how it started, the end result is this day is bigger than any one company. It really is. Local communities last year started block parties around the day to get consumers into their local downtown areas to shop the day. People were inspired by it, and they want to do things around it. It’s not like they’re calling us and asking us for permission—they’re doing it.

It all starts with the idea. No one entity owns Cyber Monday; however, someone created it.

Drew: Right. So nonetheless, you’re American Express, and you either continue to up the ante on something and keep making it better, like you’ve done with OPEN. So, looking ahead?
Needless to say, Small Business Saturday is something that’s very near and dear to our heart. And it’s something that we plan to support for a very, very long time, and we want to continue to surprise and delight small business owners across the country and make this day as special for them as possible.

Drew: Will you be expanding the tool kit?
As far as the tool kit goes, you have to remember now … the tool kit doesn’t just give them the tools to promote the day; it gives them a lot of tools and skill sets that they need to build their business throughout the year. I mean, flattening the learning curve for small business in the social space, that’s going to help them attract more customers year-round. That’s the beauty of what we’re doing on Small Business Saturday. … These tools might be built around supporting a day, but they live beyond the day. And it allows small businesses to make a compelling argument to their customers by shopping small as a year-round proposition.

Drew:There must have been a few skeptics about your involvement with this program?
Unfortunately, there’s always going to be skepticism, and I’m actually surprised there wasn’t more of it. Any time you have a large company involved in something like this, I think it does open it up to some skepticism, especially in the times that we live in. But that’s okay. The detractors are far fewer than the supporters. And when you go to the Facebook page and you read all the comments from small business owners and they talk about the fact that transactions were up 40 percent for themselves on the day—or in some cases, double—you know that it’s worth it. There are probably more detractors for Black Friday than there were for Small Business Saturday, if you think about it.

Drew: Did non-AmEx merchants benefit as well?
Because, ultimately, we’re encouraging people to shop small, no matter what card they use, no matter where they shop, … the small business owner that chose not to do anything for Small Business Saturday might very well get a customer or two they wouldn’t have gotten if the day didn’t exist. I think that’s kind of the irony. It’s the halo effect of the day that makes everyone benefit.

Drew:You must have faced different kinds of challenges in Year 2, given more time to plan.
That’s an excellent question. Year 2, timing is always a challenge. Going out too early. When do you start talking about this in the press?  When do the writers start talking about it, for example? When are merchants ready to start preparing for the day? Too much time is a blessing and a curse, right? It takes a village to create a day, that’s for sure.

Drew: So talk to me more about the balancing act here between helping small businesses and helping AmEx. 
I think it’s not surprising if somebody says, oh, American Express is doing that … to get more sales on their card. That’s not the case. The case is to help support small businesses. And when small businesses are thriving, the economy thrives. Our CEO went on the Today Show and literally said, “I don’t care if you use cash, I don’t care if you use the card or not—just shop small on the day.” I think that was impressive. He’s saying, support your local businesses.  And that’s a simple message and that’s why we’ve gotten so much traffic with it, frankly. If it was just [an AmEx] card play, it wouldn’t have worked.

Drew: As market leader, it’s pretty simple—if small businesses grow, you’re going to grow with them, right?
Absolutely. If small businesses grow, if more are created, that’s a marketplace that we want to thrive. We want them to thrive.  When they’re doing well, we’re doing well. There are plenty of reasons for customers to use their card, and I don’t want this to turn into a commercial for us, but clearly, our customers think of us—we have a special place in their wallet, and we always will. And we know that. But again, we know for Small Business Saturday to be a success, we need to reach more than just our customers. So it’s a conscious play not for just us to reach out to consumers, but for other groups and other entities and other people and influencers and businesses to reach out to consumers as well.

Drew: It’s a much bigger idea than something as self-serving as “shop small businesses with the card.”
Right. It takes a lot of guts for any company to come to that decision. It’s impressive. At this point, it’s the expectation that we find innovative solutions for small businesses. And SBS is delivering on that very high expectation for us.

As far as I am concerned, Small Business Saturday is the quintessential example of Marketing as Service, achieving the kind of success that most marketers can only imagine.  The service in this case not only establishes a day that puts the spotlight on small businesses and rivals Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but also enables small businesses to be more competitive throughout the year, with marketing toolkits that highlight their distinct advantages over their larger competitors.

With the third annual Small Business Saturday set for November 24, perhaps the most remarkable part of this program is how it is developing a life of its own, with politicians uniting over its significance and more and more small business owners trying to take advantage of “their” day. To better understand the thinking behind this program, I spent a good hour on the phone with Scott Krugman, Director of Communications at American Express.  Here’s part 1 of my interview with Scott.

Drew: So let’s start with the origin of the idea of Small Business Saturday back in 2010.
Well, like all good ideas, in a way, they originate from our customers. AmEx OPEN’s been around now for twenty-five years, and the reason why we’ve been around so long and been so successful is because we really take the pulse of our customers in a variety of ways, and in this particular case, what we found out through research and talking to our customers, their biggest need coming out of the recession was more customers. So that got us to thinking, what can we do to help small businesses get more customers?

Drew: So after identifying the need, what then?
After a number of conversations with a lot of people, the thought came: what could we do to drive business to small businesses during key times throughout the year?  Naturally, that got folks in the room talking about the holiday season. Obviously big-box merchants have “Black Friday.”  Online merchants, more recently, have Cyber Monday.  So we thought there might be something there for small businesses, and the thought here was, let’s give small businesses their ceremonial kickoff to the holiday season.  Let’s get their holiday shopping season off to a strong start.  Let’s create a day for them.  It wasn’t as quick and as simple as I’m making it out to be, but what that ended up becoming was Small Business Saturday.

Drew:  Looking back now, it seems like a no-brainer, but why back in 2010 did you think it would work?
We thought it was the right message at the right time.  There were a lot of conversations that were happening about the importance of small businesses to the economy.  The “shop local” movement was going strong, so we knew that there would be a lot of support.  We also knew through research that 98 percent of consumers said that they wanted to support small businesses.  So we wanted to create something that would take that support and turn it into sales.  And as we started iterating, it became clear that this was a movement. 

Drew: So how long did it take to go from idea to execution?
I should point out in terms of the timing element, this was basically getting the concept of Small Business Saturday to market—it had to happen in a matter of a few weeks.

Drew: Wait, let me make sure I heard you correctly. So in 2010, from green light to execution, it took how long?
A matter of weeks!

Drew: Did you advertise Small Business Saturday in Year 1 (2010)?
There was definitely advertising.  There was also a press conference at city hall involving New York City Mayor Bloomberg and our CEO, Ken Chenault.  There was a lot of earned media around it in terms of announcing the day.  It was a unique enough concept where it got a lot of curiosity and a lot of pickup.

Drew: What role did social media play in the launch of SBS?
There was a lot of social media around it.  In just that first year, we saw 1.2 million people liking the Small Business Saturday Facebook page.  That’s a lot of likes in a very short period of time.  We saw 30,000 tweets using the hashtags #SmallBusinessSaturday and #SmallBizSaturday.  I was told this, and I guess it was determined with Google, that it (“Small Business”) was the fastest-rising Google search term over that time period. So, I mean, there was a lot that went into it, but we knew in order for this thing to take off, it really needed to have a strong foundation in social media for it to become viral.  That certainly worked.

Drew: So why do you think this program took off?
We’re looking at four factors that really helped.  One was there was a lot of inclusiveness.  There was national scope.  The message was clear in terms of individuals being able to boost the economy.  This is really key and really important, because as much as we talk about American Express in this—and we’re not always comfortable doing that because we feel it takes away from the day—it became an agnostic day.  For small businesses to participate, they don’t have to accept the American Express card.  For consumers to participate, they don’t have to use the American Express card.  Is American Express making an offer for consumers on the day?  Yes.  But, they’re not limited to using that card in order to make a difference.

Drew: How did small businesses react?
It created a solution to help spur more business for small businesses, and small business owners really took to it.  I think in Year 1, not as much, because there wasn’t a lot of time to get them to own the day.  So I would say Year 1 was probably more about claiming the day.

Drew: So this feels a bit like cause marketing, another idea AmEx essentially invented.
You know, there are a couple schools of thought on that.  Small businesses definitely needed the help.  But at the same time, this isn’t charity.  Small businesses are the engine that drives the economy.  They’re creating jobs.  If people support small businesses, they’re supporting their local communities.  So they’re not just supporting the businesses, they’re supporting themselves.  They’re helping everyone.  It makes the entire engine work, especially as you’re coming out of recession. But the other piece of it is, it’s the discovery aspect of what makes small businesses so special.  And it’s not the fact that maybe they do need the help, but it goes beyond that.  It’s helping consumers rediscover these businesses that have been there all along in their communities: the amazing customer service, the unique selection and the special experiences.

Drew: So how do small business compete against larger rivals in the face of discounting?
They focus on their core elements.  Large businesses spend millions of dollars a year on customer relationship management tools to understand their customer. Small businesses?  That’s an inherent part of who they are.  So it’s a day for them to really leverage those strengths and allow consumers to kind of rediscover what makes them great.  But at the same time, it’s helping small businesses not just own the day, but give them the tools that they need to thrive during the day.  This might kind of take us a little bit into Year 2, but we can always pivot back and forth.

Drew: It must have been tricking to balance AmEx branding and the SBS idea…
This is one of those campaigns where the message was so compelling, and the reason for doing it was so genuine, that people naturally wanted to take part in it.  Again, this is where it needs to become more than just about American Express, because you’re not going to get the response from public officials if Small Business Saturday is owned by any one corporate entity.  You’re not going to get that kind of response.

So that’s why it’s more than just about us.  We might have been the one to push the idea into the marketplace, but in all honesty, it’s the small business owners that owned the day.  It’s their day.  We might have given it to them, but they have taken it and made it their own.  We will always support it.  We will always do things in the marketplace to support the day and to support small business owners because that’s what we do at OPEN.  But it is their day, and that’s what makes it genuine.  And frankly, that’s what’s made it successful.

Drew: Was it hard to relinquish ownership of this idea?
That’s a fair question.  I think it’s one of the tough things when there’s such a good idea on the table.  I think the natural inclination is to want to own and control it.  But that’s the irony here.  For it to be successful, you couldn’t do either.  And I think there were enough smart people in the room to know that.  Ultimately, we realized, it takes a village to create a day.

Drew: AmEx “$25 offer to shop small” couldn’t have hurt the program.
For us to do this right, AmEx also had to be “skin in the game,” so of course the card member offer was critical.  Otherwise, it’s just lip service.  Like I said, Small Business Saturday is what we created for the entire small business community.  But I think our merchants come to expect us to look out for them in ways that others don’t.

Drew: So, did Small Business Saturday drive small business sales? 
Yes, actually.  I can tell you on the record that transactions of—we can only right now measure folks that use the American Express card, right?  That’s what we have available to us.  So for merchants that accept the card, card transactions were up 23 percent on the day.

Drew: How about the softer measures like favorability among small businesses towards the AmEx brand?
I’m limited in terms of some of the metrics that I can discuss.  But let’s say our philosophy is, if you do the right thing, customers are going to recognize that about you.  And I think that there are not many companies that would have been able to do something like a Small Business Saturday in a genuine way.  I think that has a lot to do with the OPEN brand as it relates to American Express, frankly.

Drew: It must help that this is not the first time you’ve focused on small businesses.
Yes.  We’ve been in the marketplace for small businesses probably longer than anyone else.  I believe we had the first business card devoted to small businesses.  I think because of the history we have in this community, there’s an expectation that we are going to be supportive beyond product offerings.  So I think that it’s one of those situations where all those interests are aligned.  Obviously, we have an interest in doing the right thing to help small businesses: it’s what we’ve been doing.  Our customers expect us to help them with their solutions.  So I think you could say, in a lot of ways, Small Business Saturday was a result of us doing what we have always done, and that’s listening to our customers’ needs and trying to find solutions.  It just so happens that we found something, in this particular case, that was massively innovative.  And is there a halo effect from that?  Absolutely.  That’s why I think you see a lot of other companies wanting to be a part of Small Business Saturday as well.

Drew: So is this about doing well by doing good?
Like I said, I think for a company to do the right thing in a meaningful way, it needs to be genuine.  And I think the marketplace, whether it’s small business owners or consumers, are smart enough to know when it’s not.  So I think it needs to start from the desire of wanting to do good and wanting to do the right thing.  That’s where Small Business Saturday is no different.  That’s where it starts.  I think there’s… if you do the right thing in the right way, good things come with that, yes.

In truth, there just aren’t that many truly inspiring marketing as service programs out there right now despite all of my drum beating.  Which is one of the reasons I’m absolutely fixated on Small Business Saturday, a program that unites the nation to focus on “shopping small” for at least one big day.  Conceived in 2010 by American Express and their super savvy Open group, the program quickly gathered support from other big companies like FedEx.  That is just one of the reason’s I was delighted to run into Denise Yunkun, FedEx’s Director of Alliance Marketing at the recent CMO Club Innovation Summit in San Francisco.  Denise was able to provide some really interesting insights into why FedEx is involved with Small Business Saturday and the nature of their commitment.  Our Q+A follows. (By the way, Small Business Saturday will be on November 24th this year nestled nicely between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.)

Drew: FedEx has been part of Small Business Saturday from the get go.  Why? 
Supporting small businesses is, very simply, good business.  Small businesses are incredibly important customers for FedEx and they also are the driving force behind a successful and thriving economy.  Small Business Saturday reinforces the importance of independent retailers in building and sustaining vibrant communities everywhere.  The $1 million commitment we’ve made to this effort is intended to go directly back to small businesses.

The importance of small businesses is undeniable.  They employ half of all private sector workers – about 60 million Americans, they have generated 65 percent of net new jobs over the past 17 years, they account for more than 97 percent of all U.S. exporters and more.  Their success is our success.

Drew: What were the lessons learned from year 1 and 2 (in light of the fact that you really increased your commitment in year 3)?
Aligning to support Small Business Saturday makes good business sense for FedEx as small businesses are such important customers.  Distributing gift cards directly to consumers was a very effective way to engage them and drive them to spend at small business so we are doing it again this year.  Also, it’s an excellent opportunity for us to utilize the more than 1,800 locations in our FedEx Office network for small businesses.  We are providing a variety of free and discounted marketing materials such as posters that can be printed at no cost at FedEx Office Print & Ship locations.  Also, these customers will receive additional discounts when they come in to pick up their posters.

Overall, Small Business Saturday has a strong response last year.   More than 2.7 million Facebook users, 230 public and private organizations, 75 corporations and elected officials in all 50 states and Washington D.C. declared their support for SBS last year. More than 500,000 small business owners leveraged an online tool or promotional materials for SBS and 15,000 businesses signed up for free Facebook advertising to promote their products and services in the run up to SBS.

Drew: Last year, FedEx offered 40,000 $25 gift cards in support of SBS making it a $1.0mm commitment.  How do you measure the success of such a large promotional giveaway?
While we measure this in several ways, it’s important to note that above all, this is an effort to show our  support and appreciation for SMB’s with no strings attached. We do measure engagement and dialogue in social media channels, media coverage etc.

Drew: Will you be running that same offer in 2012 and/or doing something new?  Please provide an overview of your 2012 program (I can hold this until you’ve announced itpublicly)
FedEx will distribute 40,000 Shop-Small-branded $25 American Express Gift Cards to consumers, for free, via the FedEx Facebook page.  The give-away ended on Nov. 3 and  the winners will be chosen at random from the pool of entrants.  FedEx will also provide all registrants with a coupon to Save $10 on a $20.00 FedEx Express shipment, valid through December 31, 2012. Terms and Conditions will be included on the coupon.

FedEx Office^® is also continuing its work to help small businesses draw in customers on Small Business Saturday and throughout the holiday season with access to a variety of free and discounted marketing materials.  In addition to the Gift Card giveaway, FedEx Office will support Small Business Saturday by helping independent retailers and other small businesses grab attention on Small Business Saturday and throughout the holiday season. Small business owners can visit Facebook.com/SmallBusinessSaturday  or shopsmall.com/fedexoffice  to access Small Business Saturday posters that can be printed for free at local FedEx Office Print & Ship Center locations.  Additionally, small businesses who take advantage of this free poster offer will also receive additional discount printing offers when they come in to pick up their posters.

Drew: Marketing partnerships can be kind of tricky.  Why do you think this particular one works so well?
FedEx has worked closely with American Express for over 10 years.  With our mutual focus on the success of small businesses, our relationship really is a natural fit.

Drew: How does FedEx make sure your connection to SBS doesn’t get lost in all the noise created by other SBS partners?
Our commitment to Small Business Saturday is substantial.  It’s also a natural extension of what we do for small businesses every day.

Just as one example, FedEx recently launched its first-ever, nationwide small business grant competition which will award a total of $50,000 to six deserving U.S. small businesses. The top winner will receive a $25,000 grant and the remaining five winners will receive grants of $5,000 each.  The top six small businesses – including the grand prize winner – will be announced in January.  We also create and participate in programs that give small businesses a head start, access to new opportunities and education to handle the challenges of shipping their goods.

Drew: Do you have any words of wisdom for other companies that are considering marketing partnerships?
While there are several factors, it’s important to ensure that your interests/goals are mutually aligned and the brands and value propositions are complimentary.

Alas for the Detroit Tigers who went down 4 straight against the SF Giants, their success against the Yankees in the playoffs is quickly forgotten as only the winners get the ring (and a parade!)  Arguably, social media has raised its game—no longer a promising rookie but now a reliable, multi-faceted, game-changing veteran.

And lest you think this is just another pitch from a daily practitioner, I called upon the wisdom of four big league players from Aramark, Accenture, Sephora and Barclaycard, all of whom presented at Pivot a couple of weeks ago and helped shape this four-part game plan that should help your company be a giant in social media.

Raise Your Game
With the introduction of a one-game wildcard play-in, two additional teams got a chance to reach postseason glory by winning when it counts.  In social, every company—even B2B brands—also must raise their game to advance.  Or as Danna Vetter, VP Consumer Strategy at Aramark, put it, “We needed to make sure social was no longer a tactic but a business strategy.”

“The table has turned and consumers are driving how and where they will be serviced,” Vetter continued urgently. “They expect companies they interact with to be active in social.”  Consequently, after laying the groundwork internally, Vetter “created listening frameworks that helped identify, route and respond to social conversations.”

Play as a Team
While baseball fans are famous for their devotion to individual player statistics, team averages for batting and pitching make all the difference in the playoffs (one look at the Tigers anemic .159 team average vs. the Giants and you’d know what happened).  The social media equivalent here is broad employee participation, as the winning companies make sure that just about every employee is trained and encouraged to be brand advocates on social media.

Explains Jason Breed, Accenture’s Social Media Practice Lead, “Empowering your networks is a strategic advantage at this point.” For companies that truly embrace social, success results when “every employee is an advocate, not just the media-trained execs,” adds Breed.

Extend Your Line-up
Inevitably during the playoffs, a previously unsung player emerges as a hero, pitching in at just the right moment to help his team to victory.  In social media, this means looking beyond the tried and true platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn and experimenting with emerging ones like Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr.

With nearly 4 million fans on Facebook, Sephora has a huge social sales engine on its hands.  But as Bridget Dolan, VP of Interactive Media at Sephora, notes, “The velocity of Pinterest growth combined with its shopping-centric nature have made it a very promising sales channel since we launched on that platform 6 months ago.”

Stay Ahead of the Curve
Thanks to Billy Bean’s “Moneyball,” “the game of inches” transformed from a hunch-driven sport to a stat-driven enterprise. With social, the opportunity to get smarter about your products and customers is never-ending, and a few inspired companies are uncovering innovative ideas that will drive future success.

Paul Wilmore, Managing Director of Consumer Market at Barclaycard, set up an “Innovation Lab” that resulted in what just might be the first crowdsourced credit card.  Notes Wilmore, “Crowdsourcing can be used to take the guesswork out of product development and traditional market research tactics.”

Final Note
The quotes above are like grass stains on a player’s uniform: indicative of dramatic action but hardly able to tell the whole story.  To see my complete and truly enlightening interviews, just click on these links: Vetter, Breed, Dolan and Wilmore or visit TheDrewBlog.  And if this article seems familiar, that’s because you may have seen it on MediaPost or Social Media Today.

Just in case you needed further evidence that social goes well beyond the walls of marketing, here is my interview with Jason Breed, Global Lead Social Media Practice at Accenture who shared his thoughts on how social is complicating HR and employee relationships.  Jason offers insights into how companies including Accenture are adapting to this new reality.  Thanks Jason.

Drew:  Can you explain how social has made employee relationships so complicated?
First, thanks for the opportunity to talk a bit about this topic that is vexing companies of all sizes and social media maturity levels.  To answer your question, I think employee relationships are already somewhat complex and social adds a few new wrinkles to work through.  From what I see, the new wrinkles include: technology (BYOD allowing access to sometimes restricted sites and information security risks), Brand Advocacy (now every employee is an advocate not just the media trained execs) and further blurring the lines of work vs. personal (when co-workers are a part of your social stream)

Drew:  At lot of companies like to control and centralize social engagement which cuts most employees out of the loop.   What are the disadvantages of this approach?
Good question and I don’t want to further the impression that this is always bad.  In certain regulatory/compliance and other environments centralization is needed.  I’ve noticed that when many companies restrict social inside the organization, it is simply due to a lack of understanding or a lack of perceived business value.  If a company is “doing social” simply to check a box and have not put the required business process and strategy behind it, then it may be better to centralize to help them get comfortable and develop value propositions accordingly.  If a company understands the value of their employee networks, partner networks, etc then centralization and control are less likely.

Drew:  Some companies like IBM are particularly good at unleashing their army of advocates (employees).  What do you see as the benefits of this approach?
Empowering your networks is a strategic advantage at this point.  The Insurance industry is a good example.  Agents have been using social to connect with their customers for a while.  Companies who empower this at the enterprise level can harness the value of every Agent’s network collectively which can create more overall value for everyone involved (Company, Agent and Customer).

Drew:  Is Accenture allowing and or encouraging all of its employees to be active on social channels and if so, how is it working?  
Accenture has been a leader in empowering employees for a while and some of the awards and positive press we receive validates this.  For example, Accenture has received many industry accolades for its work in socially infusing our talent and hiring programs and continues to work side-by-side with leading social networks in developing the next generations of how we recruit, hire, train and retain employees by using personal social connections throughout that journey.

Drew: Forrester recently announced that social media drives less than 1% of sales which could encourage some brands to curtail their social activities.  Is trying to tie social activities to sales the wrong metric given all the other things that social can do for a business including employee retention?
Social activities have to tie back to business value otherwise, why do them?  That said, social provides the opportunity to re-think the way that businesses do business.  Social as “yet-another-sales-channel” is hard to make successful.  There is greater value in reconsidering the sales process (shove out messaging so people will click to buy) so you consider enabling the ability to people to buy (providing product reviews that are relevant to the individual can greatly increase conversions, the same with offering click-to features where customers can get quick answers to special needs.  We work with a company who measures the purchase path and have found that customers who get to a product page from one of their communities is almost 80% more likely to purchase than people who come directly to the product page.  Just that alone contributes 1% of their overall sales, not counting everything else they do.  In social sales, every prospect is not just another nail to the traditional sales process hammer.

Drew:  Do you have any examples of companies that are doing a particularly good job motivating employees through their social media policy? 
I’m not sure that a policy is going to motivate any employees.  Culture certainly has the most to do with motivating employees.  Dell is a great example of empowering employees, training them and managing skills over time as anyone I have seen.  This is done programmatically though where their policies are a small part.

Drew: Given the role that social can play in both recruiting and retaining employees, do you think it is problematic that most companies put social media responsibilities in their marketing  departments?  
Only if the company wants more value out of social than just marketing.  Once again, many companies have set up their social camps where it made sense at the time.  The good news is that companies are deriving additional value out of social and therefore many are in the process of re-designing that function and where it resides within the organization.

Drew:  Finally, let’s talk about netiquette.  Should a boss accept a friend invitation on Facebook from their direct reports?  Should an employee accept a friend request from his or her boss?  Or just speak to the complications of the intermingling of personal and professional lives.  
This is more a question of culture as it relates to each department within a company.  I know departments that participate in activities like an after-hours softball league, etc.  to me, that is acceptable but is different for each individual.  For employees looking to “monitor” their staff, there are other ways to legally do that.

In my recent MediaPost article, I argued that social media is a ripe avocado whilst social business is guacamole, taking something that is good already and transforming it something that is truly amazing. While the analogy seemed to hold up and allowed me to showcase IBM’s updated platform that helps companies make “guacamole,” it didn’t provide an inside look at how B2B brands are approaching social business.

To redress that shortcoming, here is my recent interview with Danna Vetter, VP of Consumer Strategy at Aramark.  Danna does a particularly good job explaining how Aramark moved social from being a tactic to a business strategy.   And by the way, Danna will be presenting next week at the Pivot Conference in NYC.

Drew: First, can you explain to the uninitiated what Aramark does?
ARAMARK provides food, facility, and uniform services for a number of verticals, including sports arenas and stadiums, hospitals, colleges, universities and schools, and businesses around the world.

Drew: What does it mean to become a social business?  
To be a social business, you have to integrate your business processes with social technology. To take that further, one could argue that a truly social business has leveraged social technology, tools and channels to fundamentally change the way they do business.

Drew:  Has Aramark become a “social business?” And if so, can you talk a bit about the journey?
We’re not there yet but we’re working toward it. We’re still early on our journey, but we’ve recognized the importance of getting there and have made some great progress.

The reality was that social was happening all around our company (and with our consumers and clients) whether we were actively involved from a corporate perspective or not. Like most companies, our first steps were removing the fear of social for our executives and business leaders. So we brought the right stakeholders to the table and created the kinds of governance, strategy, and framework to ensure people were actively involved and comfortable with the process. We needed to make sure social was no longer a tactic, but a business strategy.

We trained the organization on the importance of why ARAMARK was leveraging social. And for our active social users, we gave them the proper training and resources to operate within their social strategies. We also created listening frameworks that helped identify, route, and respond to social conversations. This has all helped us limit risk and enable new technologies that we needed to be using.  And by creating a connected environment, it also set up our employees to communicate and collaborate in ways that they weren’t before.

Drew:  Where in the organization did the impetus to become a social business come from?
It started with our consumers. The table has been turned and consumers are driving how and where they will be serviced, they expect the companies and brands they interact with to be active in social. To promote, listen and react when they speak up. As a consumer strategy team, we were able to identify this and escalate the need and urgency to take part in these social conversations.

Drew: As VP, Consumer Strategy are you part of the marketing department?  If not, how important is having a broader purview than marketing in order to implement a social business transformation?  
At ARAMARK, marketing lives within each line of business. What’s unique about my team is that we sit in a corporate function that helps accelerate consumer strategies across all of our businesses. This setup allowed for my team to be the catalyst for the social business vision, but we couldn’t do it alone. The reality is that we worked, and continue to work with individuals in all of our businesses and functional areas (including HR, Legal, Corporate Communications, Privacy and others) to move us forward in the journey. This cross-functional team and effort is essential in moving the social business vision forward at a company as large and complex as our organization.

Drew:  Have you been able to link your efforts to become a social business to any tangible goals like customer satisfaction or sales?   
We are still in the beginning of finding ways to link those goals to bottom line results. We have had some great wins in terms of leveraging our listening framework to identify consumer issues and connect them to the right people across the organization – and eventually to solutions. We also have some success in terms of using social channels for marketing and promotions, but we’re often in a situation where we’re trying to connect online promotion with offline action. To be honest, it’s just hard to track that type of interaction. We’re working on it, and I don’t think we’re the only company facing that challenge. Right now, we are trying to focus our active users on building our networks, engaging with our audiences, and listening.

Drew: What advice would give to a friend in your role at another company about the social business journey?
Be patient and stay aware. It is not an overnight project. Just when you feel like you have won over everyone needed, there’s a whole other set of people you have to win over.

Social and digital technologies are making leaps every single day. You need to adapt and evolve what that means for your company as well as your strategies. Make hard decisions and be ready to change them tomorrow.

Finally, find the right people. Every organization has people who are passionate about social media from a personal perspective. Find those people and put them to work.

Let’s just start with the fact that Sephora has nearly 4 million fans on Facebook and over 700,000 followers on Twitter.  Clearly this is a company that is doing something right on social media and well worth a closer look.  Thanks to the kind folks at Pivot, I got the chance to interview Bridget Dolan, VP of Interactive Media at Sephora, prior to her presentation at the conference next week.  I am certain you will find her comments as enlightening as I did.

Drew: What role(s) does social media play in Sephora’s overall marketing strategy?  Do you assign different roles to different platforms?
Social media plays a major role in Sephora’s overall business strategy. We value the engagement and conversations we have with our customers through our multiple social channels and encourage this social engagement throughout the organization.  After seeing how successful the Sephora Facebook and Twitter pages have been, we implemented a Pinterest integration when we re-vamped Sephora.com in April 2012, and have also since created a Sephora Instagram account. Both have seen a lot of organic growth over the summer and we are always looking at new social platforms for other ways to engage with current and potential clients.

Facebook and Twitter allow us to hear from our clients real-time and react one-on-one; we respond to every single customer question and give our clients a voice. We then learn from our clients and use that information to inform our strategies throughout the organization.

Pinterest and Instagram allow us to react to micro-trends, like showing your spirit with Olympic nails.  We also provide Sephora fans a look behind the scenes of what it is like to work at Sephora, be at our shoots, and which products we are obsessed with. BeautyTalk allows us to foster a beauty community on our site, to get customer questions answered by Sephora experts and other beauty enthusiasts. Tumblr lets us tell our trend and brand stories from another angle – insights from our beauty editors.  YouTube lets us share our expertise and teach customers how to apply makeup and see the latest trends – which encourages them to shop, play and enjoy makeup.

Drew:  A recent Forrester study said social media drove less than 1% of sales for most companies.  Is Sephora performing above that average and if so, why do you think that is the case?
Sephora is a huge company, and driving 1% of overall sales is still a big piece of the pie. I do believe that social media is influencing a lot of sales that can never be tracked: watching a Sephora YouTube video, then shopping at the store on the weekend, or liking an Instagram post on your phone in the coffee line, and buying the products online when back you’re at your desk.

Drew: Have some social platforms proven to be better at driving Sephora sales than others?  If so, please explain.
Facebook is our largest social media platform, and is still driving the most sales for us by far.  But the velocity of Pinterest growth combined with its shopping-centric nature have made it a very promising sales channel since we launched on that platform 6 months ago.

Drew: Is driving sales the wrong metric for social and if so, what metrics do you use to rationalize your investment?
Whenever we can measure direct sales, we do, but it isn’t the only metric to consider – really social media is about engagement.  We are fostering a long-term relationship with our customers.  We want her to be inspired to try new things, find information through sources she trusts, find products that really get her excited, and help her to use the product to its fullest with confidence post-purchase.  Social media helps her with the entire purchase cycle, and keeps her engaged with our brand for all of her beauty needs.  If you can create a venue to engage your most valuable customers, and enlist them to be evangelists for your brand to all of their friends, plus they will answer all of your other customers’ beauty questions because they are just that passionate… it is priceless.

Drew:  A lot of brands would kill to get nearly 4 million fans on Facebook.  How have you been able to attract so many fans?  Media?  Promotions?  Both?
Bridget: Sephora has truly passionate fans that love beauty and love Sephora.  The beauty category is a natural fit for social – our customers have always talked amongst their friends about beauty products they loved, but Facebook makes it much easier to connect with other Sephora fanatics.  We have done a bit of advertising and a few promotions, like Fan Fridays, but we mostly view Facebook as a place to have fun with our customers, and I think they can tell how much we love talking to them.

Drew:  Is there one Sephora social program that you are particularly proud of?
I think BeautyTalk is one of the more innovative undertakings we’ve done in social media.  We created a robust community on our site where our clients can come to ask any beauty question or talk about beauty,  organized by category. This allows our customers to find really rich answers with multiple points of view, combined with real-time advice from our experts.

Drew:  How has Fan Fridays been working for you?
Fan Fridays has been a great program, and our customers love it.  When we have an early access product or really hot promotion, we can be out in as little as 20 minutes.  We keep trying to support the growth, but it can be hard to anticipate which Fan Fridays will go wild until your wall lights up and you realize you need even more for next week… again.

Drew:  You have over 100,000 followers on Pinterest which is way more than most brands.  What are you doing on Pinterest that is gaining so much traction?
Beauty is inherently a visual category, but right now things like nail art and gorgeous product shots are inspiring our customers to re-pin our images. We also have integrated Pinterest deeply in our site so every product and brand image is pinnable. We do all of our own photography in house, and that investment pays off in a place like Pinterest.

Drew:  Is there a brand out there that you think is just killing it in social?  If so, which one and why?
I think it is the “brand” that Eva Chen created for herself.  She is literally on every social media channel – trying innovative things, living the life, inspiring people every day with videos, pictures, products, quotes.  And she is creating a unique footprint in each venue that is relevant to that platform and her followers in each.

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