Smart Marketing

My Day at the Facebook FMC - Pt. 2

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 23:36:00 +0000

After all of the big presentations, we were instructed to move into other rooms to attend breakout sessions. There were two rounds of sessions, the first options were as follows:

Session One
a. Creative content on Facebook: What people share and why

People are most influenced by the people they are emotionally closest to. Learn how to create great content on Facebook by understanding the psychological motivations behind why people share, like and comment.

Presenter
Paul Adams, Global Brand Experience, Facebook, and author of Grouped

b. The Hacker way

The pace of change in today’s business world requires teams to move fast and be bold. Find out how Facebook’s engineering team fosters innovation, and how Ford adopted those principles to do the same.

Moderator
Doug Frisbie, Head of Automotive, Global Vertical Marketing, Facebook
Presenters
Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Director of Product Engineering, Facebook
Julius Marchwicki, Product Manager, SYNC AppLink at Ford Motor Company

c. Facebook Pages: Telling your brand story

Facebook Pages offer an unprecedented opportunity to tell the story of your brand. Hear about the philosophy behind the design and learn how to use your page to the fullest.

Presenters
Blaise DiPersia, Product Designer, Facebook
Jeff Kanter, Product Manager, Facebook

I chose to attend "The Hacker Way" for a very specific reason, Boz. When I was at Facebook last year, Boz was the most inspiring speaker of the whole group. He is a master motivator and was the guy who inspired the concepts of "Social-By-Design" and other Facebook slogans such as "Move Fast. Break Things." He is also one of the leaders of the hacker programs at Facebook and this session was explaining about what that means.

Andrew "Boz" Bosworth on stage at FMC talking about the Hacker Way

Most of what Boz spoke about was an abbreviated version of what I'd heard last year, but his delivery still inspired me. He talked about how at Facebook they build things and then launch them with a very short lead time. He admitted that not everything works but they prefer to "build it and see" rather than let things toil while in an effort to figure out every answer. He used terms like "standardized disruption" to explain that you have to let people do what they came to do, even though it may go against the grain. He blasted executives or long-term employees that "poison the well" for new people who enter a company that have interesting ideas but are often discouraged from thinking differently.

All of this may sound like common knowledge, but I find that when I am sitting in a room with Boz, he makes me take a deep look at myself and the way I've operated my business for the past dozen years. And how I did the jobs before that and the people that told me that something couldn't be done. Don't get me wrong, Boz is not a motivational speaker, he is really just an "aww shucks" guy that makes you believe that the world is changing for the better because of people like him.

After Boz, Julius Marchwicki from Ford come on to explain how they took the Hacker concept to heart and a handful of Ford engineers came to Facebook and they held a Hackathon to create new ways of making the automobile more social. For a 24 hour period Ford and Facebook engineers competed with each other to create new ideas, many of which are now in the Sync-based system in Ford cars.

Julius showed how they incorporated many different things ranging from location check-ins, music integrations with Spotify/Pandora/Clear Channel's I Heart Radio (where you can share your playlist with others who are driving in their cars), and overall voice activation of apps. Julius did make the point that social networking while driving was not the goal, only to use voice activation and social compatibility to make your experience in your car that much more social.

You can watch the whole session HERE and if you want to watch the other sessions, you can watch them here:

Creative Content on Facebook
The Hacker Way
Facebook Pages

Session #2 options included:

Session 2
a. Driving maximum value from your social marketing strategy

The most successful brands on Facebook are innovating in every dimension of their social marketing. Join us for a look at how to build the right strategy for your objectives.

Presenters
Mike Fox, Director of Global Vertical Marketing, Facebook
Wanda Young, Senior Director, Social Media Strategy, Walmart

b. Success through collaboration: Brands, agencies and Facebook

Today’s marketing landscape demands coordination across multiple teams and functions. Join us for a living case study on how brands, agencies and Facebook can best work together.

Presenters
Mark D’Arcy, Director of Global Creative Solutions, Facebook
Joe Grigsby, Group Planning Director, VML
Randall Brown, Global Director Digital, Gatorade
Sarah Robb O’Hagan, President North Amer ica and Global CMO, Sports Nutrition, Gatorade

c. Turning insights into engagement

Facebook Pages are at the center of successful marketing on Facebook. Learn how to use Page Insights to more effectively build connections and engage a wider audience with your content.

Presenter
David Baser, Product Manager, Facebook

I chose to attend the first one, Driving maximum value from your social marketing strategy.

Mike Fox, the head of Vertical marketing went through the steps for brands to best connect with their customers. He explained that this is broken into 4 key areas:

Connect
Engage
Influence
Integrate

He went through each step and for each section he gave a really good example of what he meant. Mike explained that it's time we put real people on our Facebook pages and not interns. How we connect with customers is vitally important. He showed a video from Burberry featuring Christopher Bailey, the company's Chief Creative Officer who explained how they've engaged with their customers through Facebook. Mike also talked about how different brands utilize Facebook to create a better relationship with their customers. Below are shots of each slide Mike showed to expand on each point.

Mike introduced Wanda from Walmart who told her story about how Walmart incorporated social-by-design into their marketing strategy. She explained how they listened to customers who asked for products such as "bring back layaway" and acted on those requests.

Mike ended by saying that it is all about our stories. It is not about Facebook creating stories, it is about you guys (the brands and agencies) creating compelling content for customers.

You can watch the whole session HERE and if you want to watch the other sessions, you can watch them here:

Driving Maximum Value from your Social Marketing Strategy
Success Through Collaboration (no link)
Turning Insights into Engagement

The final presentation was a fireside chat between Sheryl Sandberg and American Express CEO Ken Chenault. They were introduced by Carolyn Everson, VP of Global Marketing Solutions, who stated that, "Today has been about you and how you been a connection between you and your customers and how we turn those customers into advocates."

Carolyn introduced Sheryl and Ken and made it known that American Express has been the top example of a company that has used social to change their business. She highlighted Small Business Saturday as an example of something that started on Facebook and has grown into a nationally recognized annual event.

You can watch this dialogue HERE. In brief summary, the two discussed the state of the economy, how American Express innovates, how AmEx identifies and nurtures leaders.

Ken explained that they have to constantly change. That while they study their competition, they look at their competition as more than just other card providers, but as the retailer that accept their cards as well.

This was a really good interview and Ken was an eloquent speaker, I recommend you take the time to watch this conversation.

After a long day, the event ended with a party included lots of food, drink, and music (provided by the special secret guest: Alicia Keys).

All in all a good day for networking and gaining insight into Facebook.

Phew, I think the recap took me longer than the actual conference. :-)

My Day at the Facebook FMC - Pt. 1

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 02:28:00 +0000

This past Wednesday I was in New York attending the Facebook FMC (Facebook Marketing Conference) event at the Natural History Museum. It was quite an affair with over 1,000 people in attendance. What follows is a recap. I'm breaking this into multiple postings because it will get way too long and boring if I don't.

(Note, many of the photos were taken by me - so don't complain, I did my best!)

At noon I entered the museum just as the rain started coming down. Registration was painless, people standing around with iPads asked for your name then sent you to a table to get your RFID encoded badge and a handy guidebook describing the day's events. From there I entered the museum and found a mass of people shaking hands with Facebook employees and friends.

Attendees gather in the museum's hall

I was able to connect with several Facebook employees whom I'd met back in June of 2011 when I'd attended a small conference at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, CA . They were excited at about what we were going to see during the day and promised to make themselves available after the conference if I had any questions.

Scattered around the room were places where you could take photos of yourself and tap your badge to upload automatically to your Facebook page. There was also a place, where with a tap of your badge, it would scan your Facebook profile and create your own theme song which would play as you walked into the main hall. I wish I could tell you either of these things worked, but sadly they didn't. I joked with the Facebook staff manning the computers about the irony of a technology fail at this particular event.

At around 1pm we all crammed into the museum's main theater. Apparently there were originally supposed to be 300 invites but that escalated to nearly 1,100 with hundreds being denied access.

First up was Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's COO.

I'm a big fan of Sheryl. After hearing her speak last year and meeting her, I came back telling everyone I know that she would some day run for President. Sheryl was definitely good, but it was a little different seeing her on a big stage versus seeing her in a small conference room. She spoke for about 20 minutes talking mostly about the social graph and how Facebook has changed people's lives.

I wrote a little note to myself that I felt like I was at the Church of Facebook and Sheryl was the preacher. And she did a very good job. She showed how people had used Facebook to help diagnose diseases, how governments had been toppled, and how adoptions had been made possible.

She spoke about the transparency in the world that has been proliferated thanks to Facebook, citing examples such as how congressman Justin Amash posts everything he votes for and why on Facebook.

And she ended by reminding us all that social media is about listening and not just talking and that as marketers and brands we need to have a 2 way conversation with our customers.

Next up was Chris Cox, VP of Products. I was excited to see Chris because he was one of the few people I did not meet at Facebook last year.

Chris told the story of his awkward interview at Facebook back in 2004 and how Dustin Moskovitz explained to him how big Facebook was. I liked how he summed up Facebook as "The first ever collaborative directory of people." Chris shared how Facebook has evolved from a very bland and fairly useless college student directory to a company intently focused on bringing people closer. He also noted how focused they are on mobile and television.

Chris Cox showing the original design of The Facebook

Chris spent much of his time talking about the evolution of Facebook and called out Ticketmaster specifically as a company that had seen revenue growth of $6 per user as a result of their recent app that enabled people to find where their friends were sitting at shows. He summarized Facebook as a provider of these three things:

The Graph - A collaboratively-built directory of people, places, and things
The Personal Newspaper - Rich, interactive, portable, social
The Social Platform - Bring these tools to any software on any device

After Chris came Mike Hoefflinger, Facebook's Director of Global Business Marketing. Mike was the one who really dove into the new features of Facebook. He stated that the new Facebook Timeline pages for brands were available today.

He went on to cite some of the first brands to showcase themselves in this new format including: Starbucks, American Express, Walmart, Red Bull, Kia, Macys, Butterfinger, Ben & Jerry's, and Fanscape (just kidding).

Mike explained that as of today, in addition to the new brand pages, it was also the first time people could direct message brands, and it was the debut of "Offers" that could be sent to people on their phone and via email automatically because "Facebook already has their information."

He then rolled out what this would look like and proceeded to show how brands could advertise to make this even more effective. He made points about how the average person sees 16% of what is shared with them and that using their advertising platform, you could now reach upwards of 50% a week or 75% a month of your fans using what they called, "Reach Generator." He claimed beta-test brands such as Butterfinger had seen 6 point increases in brand visibility as a result of using Reach Generator. The point he was making is that it is possible to now buy your way onto your brand's home page and make the most relevant "stories" stick. i.e. pin them on the home page via an ad. This is Facebook's big new advertising approach. They want you to come up with great content such as a wall post, a video, an offer, etc. and then keep it prominently positioned on your page along with the endorsements (Likes, comments, etc.) from your fans thus ensuring that the optimal amount of fans see it. Mike also made it clear that this new format would be available on mobile. Additionally he said that Facebook is now offering up a way to connect with your fans as they log off as well.

Mike summarized by making the following points:

Pages are "Mission Control" for a brand and that after testing this new ad format brands were seeing 3X ROI
Brands need to understand how to communicate with their fans on their Pages and that by doing this correctly they will create great content that can then be used to reach more people via what they call "Premium on Facebook"
Premium on Facebook is the best way to ensure that people see your content ("stories") on Facebook
Starting today, when you are telling stories, this now can be featured in the news feed and that you could expect 5-10x Click Through Rate (CTR)
Starting today Premium on Facebook works on mobile
Starting today there will be an additional ad placement on the logout screen - he claimed that 37 Million people logout every day and 105 Million logout every month
Stories are the new evolution of ads

The final presentation on the big stage during the first session was David Fisher, VP of Business and Marketing Partnerships who explained that while we are all marketers, we're also customers. He then brought on a panel of three senior executives:

Stephen Quinn - CMO and EVP of Walmart
Nigel Morris - CEO of Aegis Media North America
Chris McCann - President of 1-800-Flowers.com

and then proceeded to talk about how social media plays a role in their businesses.
Stephen explained that Walmart has embraced the "Social-by-Design" mantra that Facebook often touts and is aggressively working to make the shopper experience more social. Nigel made the point that a current struggle is to hire people under 30 and then to keep them. He said, "we need to evolve our businesses to accomplish this."

And that was the end of the first presentations. I'll recap the rest of the day in my next blog post...

Facebook Timeline for Brands Visual Overview

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 06:04:00 +0000

One more from the Tom Edwards guest blogger series.

Today marked a day that we have been anticipating for a few weeks now. No not leap day, but the launch of Facebook’s timeline for Brand Pages. Brands have an option to now preview or publish their brand pages with the comprehensive roll-out happening on March 30, 2012.

Instead of going into a lot of detail out of the gate, I am changing the normal format and going with a more visual representation of changes as well as guidelines for some of the changes based on my roll-out of the BlackFin360 Timeline Brand Page.

Below is an example of the Legacy posts / Brand Milestones. Note the ability to append location & date and to post current & back-dated updates without pushing into the newsfeed. Also note that milestones will appear as full-page width updates vs. the staggered approach used for regular updates.

Once the milestone is published, you have the option to “pin the post” to create a semi-static piece of content towards the top of your brand timeline. Pins can be stories, photos, videos, campaigns, tab cross promotion, contests, etc… this is handy for promotions and highlighting key events or even simply highlighting your fan of the week. Once you have pinned a piece of content it has a “bookmark” signifying that it has been pinned.

Example of a pinned post

In future posts we will explore the ins and outs of the changes as well as what happened to custom landing pages as well as Like gating. But for now enjoy the visuals.

Linkedin Launches Company Follow Button

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 21:40:00 +0000

Another from the Tom Edwards blogger series...

Linkedin has proven to be an incredible asset for B2B Social Media Strategy & execution. With Hubspot defining Linkedin (45%) as the most effective B2B source for lead generation followed by Facebook at 33%.

With the roll-out of company status updates last October, Linkedin took the first step towards positioning itself as a marketing channel for brands. Now with Monday’s announcement of the Company Follow button, they are taking the next step in their follower ecosystem strategy.

Linkedin is now expanding the ability to follow a company beyond it’s core domain and now enabling organizations to allow individuals to follow them directly from their branded homepages or other owned properties by adding a quick code snippet to their branded pages. Brands such as Starbucks, AT&T and American Express are initial launch partners.

Similar in its impact as a Facebook like, the individual will receive status updates via their Linkedin feed. By extending the reach of the follow beyond Linkedin, the over 2 million companies in it’s network will have even greater opportunities to execute B2B content strategies both within Linkedin & their branded & owned channels.

Because B2B social is generally more targeted than B2C social, the ability to drive targeted interaction in one location while also providing a comprehensive footprint throughout the channel is key. Now with the ability to more closely associate the follow externally, it enables a more dynamic experience for the brand. As Linkedin can serve as a hub of services & 3rd party validation of those services via recommendations.

For those interested, here is the location to add the new company follow button to your branded website.

5 Brands Pushing the Envelope in Gaming

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 02:22:00 +0000

From the special edition guest blogger series. :-) Here is Fanscape's Tom Edwards' recent iMedia article about the impact of brand integration with video games...

The impact of gaming

Video game culture has evolved and now impacts politics, television, music, and Hollywood more than ever before. The power of the mainstream games market was recently on display on November 17, 2011 when Activision launched its latest entry in the "Call of Duty" series, "Modern Warfare 3." The release quickly set new sales records with 6.5 million copies sold on launch day and raked in $775 million in sales in just five days.

This figure has beaten theatrical box office, book, and video game sales records for five-day worldwide sell-through in dollars. Once thought to be more of a niche market, gaming has become a part of everyday life with new releases rivaling the biggest summer blockbusters in terms of revenue.

In 2011, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) reported that the average age for a gamer was now 37 years old. This is attributed to more individuals from the first console days adopting the current systems. The ESA also reported that the gender distribution of console gamers shows 58 percent of gamers as male and 42 percent female.

Those numbers flip when discussing casual and social gaming, but equilibrium is close when it comes to reaching both segments. Another telling statistic from the ESA is that 71 percent of people age six to forty-nine in the U.S. played video games, with 55 percent of gamers playing on their phones or mobile devices.

With such reach and engagement potential, brands have capitalized on this cultural shift in many ways. Brands have historically executed many types of gaming programs. Above the line tactics -- such as the original 1996 cult classic Chex Quest (based on the Doom engine) -- was available as a free CD-ROM on pack to consumers have been a staple of gaming programs.

Below the line tactics such as Adidas billboard displayed in the foreground of the multi-console1994 FIFA International Soccer are now standard in many of today's sports simulations as are product placements.

Brands have also attempted to capitalize on through the line advergaming such as the recent "Lost Experience" (Based on the show "Lost") with the likes of Jeep, Sprite, Monster.com, and Verizon integrating traditional and digital programs into the expansive gameplay with the goal of creating immersive digital experiences and campaign extensions brought to you by the brand.

Brands have found innovative ways through the years to create compelling gaming related experiences. Below are five brands that are leveraging different facets of advergaming, social gaming, branded games, and total immersion to reach new audience segments and reward brand enthusiasts.

Jeep

Jeep has had a long association with gaming over the years. In 1992, they released "Jeep Jamboree" for Gameboy and the titles kept coming.

In 1998, it launched the multi-platform "Jeep Thrills" and then proceeded to produce branded games including a geocaching focused title as well as a fantasy title called "City Bounce." Jeep definitely understands the reach of the medium.

Jeep's most recent effort is tied to its current association with Activision's "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3." Jeep executed an integrated marketing campaign during the pre-release buildup of "Modern Warfare 3" and on November 8 released a special edition Jeep Wrangler titled the 2012 Jeep Wrangler "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" special edition.

The release was also supported by traditional media:

This was the second time they partnered with the Call of Duty franchise, as they released a Black Ops edition in 2011.

By timing the release of the vehicle close to the game release, and driving traditional broadcast, print, innovative OOH, and social media -- including a Facebook Jeep-Ops promotion giving away one of the Special Editions -- Jeep truly capitalized on the synergy between the "Modern Warfare 3" game and it's product.

Doritos

Frito-Lay's Doritos brand has immersed itself into the gamer community. Having initially showed up as in-game sponsors in the 1999 title, "Jet Moto 3," Doritos then went on to create Xbox live gamer pics and branded advergames -- in addition to executing creative crowd sourcing -- proving that the brand has created truly innovative and relevant user driven programs.

My first exposure to Doritos association with Xbox Live was their 2009 "Dash of Destruction" Xbox Live arcade game. It was one of the first branded advergames that also offered real Xbox Live achievement points (200). This proved to be a key driver in the success of the game as Xbox Live achievement points have become incredibly relevant social currency to gamers. As an Xbox Live gamer, your gamerscore affords you status and bragging rights to your peers.

Doritos has also executed a number of promotions tied to Xbox Live and retail activation including their "Halo Reach" campaign, "Honor the Code" -- which tied directly with "Halo Reach," and Mountain Dew which gave away multiple Halo and product related prizes.

In 2010, Doritos held the first Unlock Xbox advergaming competition. This was an incredibly innovative execution as it leveraged the power of gamers to crowd source game ideas that led to two finalists working with Microsoft developers to create what became two new advergames, "Doritos Crash Course" and "Harm's Way."

Also In 2010, Doritos partnered with EA Sports for a yearlong "Change the Game" program that covered three phases of the launch of Madden 11.

I recently connected with Chris Erb, vice president of brand marketing at EA Sports, to talk about the Madden 11 program and the partnership with Doritos.

"Doritos has proven to be an incredibly innovative partner. Both brands want to deliver unique experiences that have never been done before. From the first time EA Sports enabled users to vote for the cover of Madden, to the creation of two new promotional flavors of Doritos tied to exclusive Madden content, Doritos has been a great partner for our content."

The first phase of the program was tied to the "Pick the Cover" program. Doritos partnered with EA Sports to crowd source the cover athlete for Madden 11. Doritos offered specially marked packages with former Madden cover athletes that drove to a Micro-site where the voting occurred. The voters eventually selected Drew Brees for the cover and a dozen winners got to meet with Drew Brees in Times Square.

For the launch of Madden 11, Doritos developed two new promotional flavors of chips, Stadium Nacho, and Tailgater BBQ. This was the first time Doritos created flavors that were truly inspired by the game and the NFL experience. This was also one of the only times a promotional chip ever outsold Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch. The sales were also driven by exclusive Madden content in each bag.

For the holiday season, Doritos and EA Sports wanted to do something unique for consumers. Prior to shipping the game, EA Sports had built a 3D mode into Madden 11, but the only way to play Madden in 3D was to unlock it from a bag of Doritos.

In August 2011, Doritos and Mountain Dew supported "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" with a 7-11 retail activation by placing a buy one, get one free coupon in each copy of "Modern Warfare 3." By offering an incredibly relevant incentive -- double XP to allow gamers to level up faster in the multi-player mode of "Modern Warfare 3" to double the rate they accrue experience points for a limited period of time -- they drove their target users to action. The results, between Mountain Dew and Doritos, over 1.8 million consumers redeemed over 18 million codes.

Doritos truly understands its audience and by partnering with another PepsiCo portfolio brand, Mountain Dew, Doritos has garnered the respect and dollars of gamers.

Oakley

Oakley products have routinely appeared in popular movies, especially action films. From a gaming perspective, Oakley's approach has been to embed their products into relevant gaming genres.

Oakley has shown a very strong connection with first person shooters (FPS). In 2010, Oakley's were worn by special ops operators in the 2010 "Medal of Honor" title.

Recently, two of the heaviest hitters in terms of FPS, "Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 3" and "Battlefield 3" both featured Oakley products as well. Action plus FPS equals Oakley

In "Modern Warfare 3," every scene with a Delta Force character shows the tan Oakley hard knuckle gloves.

This constant placement leads to millions of impressions as users trying to reach and surpass Prestige status via "Modern Warfare 3's" multi-player mode are constantly shown the iconic "O" throughout gameplay.

For "Battlefield 3," Oakley SI assault gloves are worn by the Marine Force Recon throughout the game.

Having a pulse on the latest trends in athletics and relying on editorial endorsement of athlete influencers has been a primary awareness driver for Oakley over the years. This applies to gaming and its sponsored athletes.

A recent example is Shaun White's snowboarding games. Oakley's association via product placement is subtle yet expansive as Shaun is one of Oakley's sponsored athletes and his signature Oakley A Frames grace the cover of his initial 2008 game and Oakley branding is on his board for the 2009 follow-up.

Shaun is sporting his signature Oakley Shaun White A Frames on the cover.

Oakley understands the importance of aligning their products to specific genres that are relevant to their core consumers.

Hyundai

As I mentioned above, brands have been placing real world vehicles into games for years. Note franchises such as "Grand Turismo," "Forza," and "Need for Speed." Toyota even capitalized on a free Xbox Live Arcade game in 2007 with its Yaris model as the central character. This was the first time an advertiser created an Xbox arcade game that was distributed over Xbox Live.

Recently, Hyundai unveiled the Veloster model at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show. The very next day you could take the car for a test drive in "Forza Motorsport 4" as free downloadable content.

Not only was the car available in game, Hyundai has also tied an in-game time trials event that awards the winner with the best time with the real car.

Hyundai has also engaged the "Forza" audience with events such as the THR Secret Car Design Contest. The contest allowed "Forza" players to submit their virtual in-game Hyundai-centric custom designs and the winner won a new Hyundai Veloster.

Here is the winning design.

Hyundai also created an iPhone app, "Hyundai Race," and promoted it via a Times Square event allowing people in New York City to play the game on the LED screen on 47th and Broadway. This was an impressive execution as it incorporated mobile as the central gaming platform and also created a significant amount of buzz for gamers and non-gamers alike.

By executing timely and relevant programs across multiple platforms, Hyundai has begun to establish itself as a brand that understands how to leverage gaming to drive awareness of its real world products.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is a true powerhouse when it comes to gaming innovation. With partnerships with EA Sports, downloadable content, retail promotions, and even a gaming zone on MSN, Coca-Cola understands how to harness the power of the medium.

Once again, I spoke with Chris Erb, vice president of brand marketing for EA Sports, about his partnership with Coca-Cola and some of the innovative programs that he has executed in partnership with the Coca-Cola Zero brand.

"Coca-Cola proved to a be a great partner for us. EA Sports is a great content supplier and Coca-Cola provides an incredible channel for content distribution. Together over the past four years, we collaboratively worked to provide positive experiences and reward our customers."

The Coca-Cola Zero brand and EA Sports partnered together to crowd source the cover athlete for NCAA Football 2012 via EA Sports NCAA Football Facebook Page.

The team also partnered with EA Sports and AMC Theaters to drive purchase at a participating theater that would lead to $10 savings on EA Sports NCAA 2012 title plus free shipping on NCAA 12 Football.

EA Sports, Coca-Cola Zero, and Wendy’s partnered together in 2010 to allow users to play the Big Score. This expansion of NCAA Football 10 allowed users to play with customized teams of Coca-Cola Zero and Wendy’s branded teams.

Coca-Cola has been involved with the World Cup since 1978. In 2010, they partnered with EA Sports to build a mode inside the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa game. The mode allowed users to recreate compelling moments as they happened brought to you by Coca-Cola Zero.

Coca-Cola Zero also partnered with EA Sports for a custom black cover of NCAA 12 in addition to sponsoring the online dynasty mode within game.

Coca-Cola has also partnered with publishers to deliver compelling downloadable content for the "Guitar Hero" and "DJ Hero" franchises.

For "Guitar Hero," Coca-Cola sponsored "My Chemical Romance" DLC that consisted of four songs.

The company also partnered with DJ Tiesto to create a "DJ Hero 2" mix pack that users could gain access to the DLC via http://www.mycokerewards.com/. I personally downloaded the Tiesto mix pack via the mycokerewards site back in 2010 and thought it was a great idea for a brand to sponsor DLC that would normally cost 600 MS points.

In June of 2011, Coca-Cola engaged NASCAR fans with a socially driven trivia game that was featured on both NASCAR.com andYahoo.com which generated over 500,000 total views in June and nearly 20,000 "likes" on Facebook.

Recently, the Coca-Cola Zero Gaming Zone set MSN records with over two million visits. This is an interactive gaming platform that the brand launched across nine European markets in May. Coca-Cola is using gaming as a relevant way to actively engage its core audience of 18 to 25 year-old men. The gaming zone consists of the latest in gaming news, reviews and access to games, quizzes, cheats, and trailers as well as exclusive contests.

With incredible global reach, Coca-Cola understands the importance of compelling programs that add value to gamers while driving brand affinity.

There are many other brands that warrant mention. Nike, Adidas, 7-11, Burger King, Dodge, Reebok, and Sobe have all shown great strides in terms of integrating their product offerings and driving innovation through gaming.

The key is to create programs that truly add value by enhancing the experience and offering incentives that are compelling to the target audience. Social currency, virtual currency, physical, and downloadable products are key elements to driving awareness and engagement in this medium.

Look for me on Xbox 360 -- my "gamertag" is TheBlackFin.

Tom Edwards is Fanscape's lead social and digital strategist. You can read Tom's blog at www.blackfin360.com/blog and you can see the original posting of this blog at iMediaConnection.com

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:46:00 +0000

I've been a bit absent lately in the blog department. And I'm not proud of it. That said, we have a new strategy leader at my company named Tom Edwards and he has been churning out a frenzy of blog posts recently. It has inspired me to get back on the blog track. So I'll have some new posts coming up. In the meantime, I want to share some of Tom's recent posts on my blog because they are really good and really helpful if you are curious about social media. I call it my guest blogger series and so the next few posts are authored by Tom and can also be viewed on Tom's blog: www.blackfin360.com/blog and our Fanscape Digitally Approved blog: www.digitallyapproved.com.

Godin Inspires

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:59:00 +0000

Seth Godin is a constant source of inspiration. I know I'm not alone in thinking that. He has just written a new book called "Poke the Box" which doesn't surprise me because Seth writes a lot of books. But this one sounds interesting on many levels. He has decided to try to re-construct the publishing paradigm by doing it himself in conjunction with Amazon and by packaging the book in a way that encourages you to give a copy to others. It is always great to hear or watch Seth speak and I just watched a recent video interview with him that I highly recommend you check out. Yes you'll hear him talk about the book, but keep watching because he'll really make you think about your "job" and your place in the world. Check it out.

http://bit.ly/uSJblB

Facebook Crisis, What to Do

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 01:00:00 +0000

Every now and then I get asked about what to do if a brand's fans and customers get angry and start using Facebook to vent. Crisis management in social media takes some concentration. No, things don't just blow over. Nor should you necessarily want that to happen. You could lose a lot of customers very quickly. Today Social Media Examiner posted a really good and concise roadmap with how to deal with a Facebook crisis. I've reposted it here and definitely check them out if you haven't before; SME is one of the best resources for small, medium, and large businesses looking for social media marketing advice.

7 Tips for Dealing With Upset Facebook Fans

By Jim Belosic
Published August 30, 2011

What do you do when you’ve just received a less-than-complimentary Facebook wall post from someone who likes your business (or used to, so it seems)?

The customer could have a simple complaint, or be so upset he’s gone on the offensive, making sure you and the rest of your community knows he’s angry.

Your next steps are key to retaining not only the business of the angry customer, but the business of other fans who like your page as well.

#1: Respond no matter what

It’s vitally important that the complaints and issues your fans pose on your wall are addressed. Inactivity on your part will appear as though you’re trying to ignore the issue and sweep it under the rug. Being unresponsive does nothing more than incite more anger and increase the chance the user will come back with even more angry wall posts.

Moreover, your community can see that angry post. If you don’t reply, it appears as though you are unconcerned with customer support, which can be detrimental to your reputation.

A response that illustrates respect and understanding for customers’ concerns will indicate your intention to rectify any problems. By addressing this upset fan, Newegg is demonstrating that they value their fans’ opinions—even the negative ones.

An upset fan who promises to shop Newegg less frequently still receives prompt, respectful customer service.

#2: Be patient and understanding

In dealing with upset fans, you must remember that you are closer to your industry, products and services than they are. What may seem like basic, common knowledge to you is often foreign to the end user.

Take a step back and put yourself in your customer’s shoes. This can go a long way in understanding why he or she is frustrated. It may not be your company’s fault that the customer is upset.

Whether or not the fault lies on your end, a simple apology will go a long way in keeping the customer’s business. Instead of trying to figure out where the blame lies, turn upset fans into loyal customers by making their experience better.

#3: Contact the Customer Privately

Sending a private message or email to the customer opens up more options for you to address his or her complaints. The goal here is to extend some sort of token letting the customer know you’re sorry he or she is dissatisfied with your company, and you’re willing to make it right. Whether that’s offering the number of the manager’s direct phone line or a discount off the next purchase, moving the conversation from public to private allows you to give the customer a personal touch that signals you care.

However, offering things like direct lines and special discounts publicly can lead to other people creating problems just to get that special treatment, so it’s best to keep these practices off the wall.

While Hayneedle’s customer shown below isn’t visibly upset about the damaged order, Hayneedle handles the situation perfectly, and contacts the customer privately to resolve the issue.

Hayneedle moves conversation with a customer from the Facebook wall to private messages to better help the customer.

#4: Consider asking the fan to remove the post

Say you’ve discussed the issue privately, any problems have been straightened out, and the faultfinder is, once again, your happy customer.

While your wall is an integral part of your web presence, the customer may be unaware of how important it really is to your reputation. If he or she is satisfied with the resolution you’ve reached and grateful for the time you’ve spent making things right, there’s nothing wrong with privately asking the person to remove the post. Most of the time, he or she will remove the angry wall post.

#5: Respond back to the original post

As a general rule, you, the Facebook page admin, should not remove negative posts. Not everyone is going to have a glowing review of your product or company. Social media users know this, and if they see nothing but positive comments, they’ll assume your company is deleting the bad comments.

If you don’t feel comfortable asking your customer to remove the post, you do have the option of publicly responding back to that post. Express happiness in the resolution you’ve reached and thankfulness for her business. Even a negative post can be a good thing, as long as the last comment is positive. Your reputation among your community will soar when they see how well you take care of your customers.

Zappos is shown below addressing a negative comment. The helpful attitude effectively nullifies any poor reflection on Zappos or their services.

Zappos responds quickly with understanding and a desire to create a better experience for their upset fan.

#6: Let your community respond

Letting your community respond for you is really the end result of all the earlier steps. It requires copious time, energy and patience with your fans, and a fantastic product. After you’ve engaged with your fans for a period of time by answering questions and offering support, you’ll notice that your fans will be more active on your page, even to the point of assisting each other.

What’s great about getting this community support is that there’s a genuine credibility when fans endorse your business for you. They become your eager virtual support agents, answering questions and solving problems before you have a chance to. But this is a level you can only achieve if you’ve nurtured and supported your community.

The Pampered Chef has built a fantastic online community of users who love the product so much, and who have been given such great support themselves, peers will answer each other’s questions before The Pampered Chef has to respond.

An outpouring of community support is the direct result of The Pampered Chef's top-notch customer service.

#7: The Last Resort

If the offended party is unreceptive to your customer service attempts, blatantly hostile and only active in your community to start arguments, banning the individual is a last-resort option. And anyone leveling expletives or racial slurs against your staff or fans should be banned. Your staff and your fans don’t deserve to be subjected to the abuse, and in the end, they will respect you more because you took the initiative.

Museum of Me

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 23:51:00 +0000

I get asked all the time what is my favorite thing I've seen from a brand on Facebook. My answer is always, Intel's Museum of Me. The idea of taking the content on your profile and putting it into a creative display isn't new. But the manner with which this particular initiative was displayed is gorgeous.

So of course, we always want to know who is behind such a great execution. I was just pointed to this story which I'm sharing below which will explain, enlighten, and hopefully inspire.

The Making of Museum of Me
In the first week of June, a new Facebook application called Museum of Me captured the attention of more than 2.5 million people and surprised the people and the company that created it. And it all started with a simple sketch on a napkin.

During a time when celebrities and businesses around the world are clamoring to grab the attention of consumers through Facebook, the Museum of Me broke through the noise by taking what people care about dearly, and letting them create their own personalized story in a visual way.

The Museum of Me was created by an Intel marketing team in Hong Kong working with a boutique advertising agency in Japan, and it's reportedly become one of the top 12 most popular museums in the world judging by the numbers.

Stephanie Gan, an advertising and digital programs manager at Intel, said the experience became an overnight sensation that spread socially around the world as millions of people were curious enough to go off and create a personalized virtual museum of their life. It was supposed to launch officially on June 1 but the team did a test pilot on May 31. Within 5 minutes, there were 36 likes. Within 5 days, there were 1 million hits.

"We just had the Facebook 'Like' button on the site and it took off through the power of what people were experiencing," Gan said.

"It spread quickly through word of mouth via social networks, largely Facebook, but also Twitter and YouTube," she said. "The first thing we saw came from a person in Madrid, who tweeted about the video we posted to YouTube."

Next, people in Japan were tweeting the link to Museum of Me. Then New York, California and Brazil. Press and analysts covering social networking and computing trends weighed in, which contributed to the buzz.

Museum of Me pulls information from your Facebook page to create a virtual museum of your digital life. Photos, videos and friends are presented as pieces of art, displayed randomly as if in a museum or art gallery.

CNET called it a "really neat tool that does a fine job of collecting all the information from your Facebook page and doling it out in a fun exhibit." The Wall Street Journal's Tech Europe blog labeled it "a slick use of Facebook's social graph and for creating what will certainly be a viral product."

It struck an emotional chord with people, according to Jayant Murty, the director of Intel's brand strategy in Asia.

"Images trigger memories and those memories can be very, very personal," said Murty. "People go back to photo albums to reminisce on the past and tell stories about our past. These are things we do in our everyday lives. We just found a way to pull this together into an online experience."

"Ultimately, the Museum of Me taps into one's narcissism and private experiences in an intensely social and networked world," Murty said.

Like any new and successful idea, the concept for The Museum of Me sprang from humble beginnings. The idea began with rough sketches drawn on cocktail napkins.

"Earlier this year at our big International Sales and Marketing Conference, our team wanted to quickly share the concept and idea of the project with our corporate colleagues, since we had the chance to meet up with them," says Murty. "We didn't have any writing material on us at the time, so we grabbed napkins from the bar, crowded around tables and sketched our ideas out!"

Not everyone was convinced once it went live, and the initial flood of visitors strained the servers gathering data for all these personal museums through the cloud.

Mashable called the experience "a bit creepy … it seems a bit like you've passed on," and BetaBeat pointed out "that the very personal nature of this information makes the context in which it sits extremely important" in a post titled "Intel's Museum of Me Features Dead Friends and Ex-Lovers."

One person said "I don't want to end up on a wall" below an image that his "friend" shared on Facebook from the Museum of Me experience.

Murty said there is a level of privacy built into the experience and that one of the big "aha" moments for him was when his team figured out how they would approach the sharing aspect.

"We created the Museum of Me with the intention of it being a personal, private experience," said Murty. "Holding steadfast to the view that this is a private experience in a public environment was probably the best decision we made."

Creating the Exhibit

After whittling down their ideas into a concept, Murty and Gan knew they were on to something big, but nobody expected it to become so popular once it went live.

"We took the idea of Museum of Me and started to share it around inside Intel when it was still in very early sketches," said Murty. "It was really back-of-the-napkin stage, but even in that early phase virtually everyone said, 'Wow, that's interesting!' And that's not a response we encounter here all the time."

According to Gan, the aim was to make something thrilling and emotional then equate it the performance and visual experience of Intel's 2nd generation of Core processors. The company markets these with the tagline "Visually Smart" to highlight built-in graphics and media capabilities.

"We are not 'in your face' about Core i5 or Intel branding," she said. "First you have the experience and then at the end we flash the brand badge. This is a better way for us to create an emotional connection."

Projector Inc., the agency in Japan, suggested they create music that would play inside Museum of Me. So they worked with artist Takagi Masakatsu, a Japanese composer who solicited more than 400 different recorded voices from his Twitter followers. Those voices were woven into the Museum of Me's musical score.

When it was finished, it represented a compelling new way to share people's digital lives. Becky Brown, who heads up Intel's social media center of excellence, said it was evident pretty quickly that more capacity was needed as the word spread.

"This thing just took off," said Brown. "We were watching comments on our fan page, and some people were saying things were lagging, and that that's how we knew we needed to add more server capacity."

Rather than this being an entirely new idea however, Murty sees it as triangulating and processing a variety of insights.

"Very often great ideas are ones in which people draw on two or three parallel sources of inspiration," he said. "The fact is, the pieces of the puzzle were there. It is just that we assembled them with the help of the talented people."

- This article reprinted from Intel's Free Press blog: http://intel.ly/otA5O8

Job Hunting

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:21:00 +0000

Over the years I've written about how to get an edge when looking for a job. It's a subject of interest for me partially out of a life-long fear of not having a job and respect for those who go after careers that fill them with passion. I was lucky enough to know what I wanted to do when I was just a kid. I was driven to learn and ultimately build my own business. I also was very specific about what I wanted to do and mapped out a path to get there.

When I speak at universities, I always recommend that students do internships, connect with people in business, and when they interview to really go for it. I often say, odds are you are going to lose, so if you lose, lose big!

Today my friend Brad sent me a great article about Tristan Walker from Foursquare. I've met Tristan several times and he is infectious. When he speaks about Foursquare you really believe they are going to change the world. At the bottom of this post, I've dropped in a video of Tristan explaining new Foursquare innovations to me and Brad at this year's SXSW conference. But first I want to share with you this article. If you are wondering how people land those very desirable jobs at companies like Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or wherever you may want to work, take some notes on how Tristan did it.

This Email Got One Stanford Student A Huge Job At Foursquare

CEMA Presentation

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:22:00 +0000

Thank you to everyone who saw me speak today at the CEMA (Corporate Event Marketing Association) conference. I had a great time and as promised, here are the links to some of the things I referenced in my presentation along with the whole presentation which is embedded at the bottom of this post.

The presentation I gave is based on what I call "Social Media Now" where I share my philosophy on how to help you focus your social media efforts.

Okay, here is the Pecha Kucha (remember, it was broken into 3 parts: innovations, brands, and resources.

BRANDS
Pecha Kucha

INNOVATIONS

1. Location Based Social - Foursquare, Facebook "Places," Gowalla, Loopt, MyTown, etc. Yes it's all the rage. Just understand that this is the tip of the iceberg. Soon when you are walking by a store your phone will buzz and offer you a coupon if you come inside.

2. Social Commerce / Social Shopping - This is your Groupon, Yelp, Gilt Group, Living Social. Flash sales that entice you to try new retailers at a tremendous discount.

3. Social Gaming - Farmville, Mafia Wars - People love playing games. We're seeing extensions of this now with apps like SCVNGR that turn your shopping and traveling into a game. Again, people love games!

4. Mobile - We've been waiting for the mobile explosion for years. Thank Apple for tipping it over with the iPhone and now Google's Android software. Everything we do online is headed towards mobile.

5. QR Codes - These black and white (sometimes color) graphics are popping up all over the place. On posters, websites, magazine ads. You can view these through an app for your phone (just search "QR Code Readers" on your iPhone, Android phone, etc. and you'll find them for free). They lead you to websites, videos, deals, coupons, etc. You can change the information whenever you want it without changing the QR Code.

6. Video - Pay attention to video. You've got YouTube as the leader, but you have new extensions showing up such as UStream which is live video streaming. I recently watched Zappos do their company meeting live on Ustream.

7. Digital and Social Immersion - Merge radio frequency identification (RFID) with smartphones and social networking and you complete the loop of total immersion in connectedness. Example: EpicMix. See what they are doing at Vail ski resorts and you’ll get it. Your ski pass is embedded with a unique ID. It knows where you are, how many miles you’ve skied, it tells you where your friends are, and it provides a platform to add photos and video. You unlock badges that automatically update to your Facebook page. You don’t need to do anything. Imagine the extensions to shopping, dining, and travel.

8. Square - This device helps everyone become a vendor. It's a little device that hooks onto you iPhone and you can then swipe a credit card. It even enables your customer to sign your phone with their finger to get a proper signature and if requested, will send you your receipt by email.

1Brands

9. Delta - This is both an innovation in technology and an innovative brand. Commerce is coming to Facebook and we'll soon be able to buy things right on Facebook. No need to leave. Delta is one of the first companies to embrace this concept and enables you to purchase your flight right on Facebook.

10. Levis - Last year Facebook created OpenGraph which enabled website to embed Facebook right into their sites. Now you can experience Facebook when you are not on Facebook. A great example of this is on Levis.com. Go to the "Friends Store" and you can see what your friends think of those 501 skinny jeans.

11. Starbucks - One of the leading brands utilizing social media. They have done a number of things in social media, but my favorite was the creation of MyStarbucksIdea.com which is a website created to crowdsource new ideas from customers and employees. Over 100 ideas have come to life and tens of thousands of people have participated in creating and voting on ideas.

12. Also from Starbucks, they recently embraced the concept of Near Field Communication (NFC) which enables a person to pay for their coffee with their phone. No need to bring your wallet, just have the barista scan your Starbucks app.

13. Bose - Great example of customer service via Twitter

14. Mountain Dew - Marketing and Market Research, crowdsourced their new flavor from their community via Facebook, Twitter, video, and more.

15. Old Spice - Direct response via YouTube as a result of people Tweeting, blogging, and Talking on Facebook about the ad campaign. Sales reportedly increased 106% during the month of the campaign.

RESOURCES

16. Blogs and Newsletters that help me stay on top of innovations in social media, specifically geared towards the small and medium business include: Social Media Examiner, Media Bistro, iMedia Connection. Specifically I recommend Social Media Examiner, every day they publish articles specific to how you can use Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. to help enhance your business.

17. Blogs and Newsletters that help me stay on top of new technologies, specifically new apps, new websites, and new social networks include: Tech Crunch, Mashable, and Read, Write, Web

18. Web tools to help you see what people are saying about you (we often call these "Reputation Management" tools) include: [Free] Search.Twitter.com (for Twitter search), Ice Rocket and Blog Pulse (to search blogs and message boards), and [Paid] Radian6 (for sentiment analysis too).

19. Facebook Management Platforms. There are many companies now that help you manage your Facebook pages, blogs, and Twitter. This can be especially helpful if you are a major brand and you need to manage hundreds of thousands of fans and you want to add new features on a regular basis without having to constantly pay to build new apps. These include: Buddy Media, Context Optional, Vitrue, Involver, and Hoot Suite (Hoot Suite is free where the others all cost several thousands of dollars - Hoot Suite is also not as advanced as the others and is more about managing conversations than adding new features and apps).

Breathe
20. Now relax - www.donothingfor2minutes.com - Believe it or not, there is a website where you can go and do nothing for 2 minutes. No seriously, you need to do nothing or you FAIL!

And below is my full presentation if you want to see that too.

CEMA Conference Presentation

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and if you saw my presentation and have any comments, please feel free to leave them here or email me at LarryW@Fanscape.com.

What is the Internet?

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:41:00 +0000

Taking a trip down memory lane and asking, "What is the Internet?" Katie vs. Ben.

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I'm a Brand, What Should I Do?

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:44:00 +0000

I just wrote a quick thought down and gave it to The Marketing Arm agency's Share Blog. Check out their blog HERE and I've pasted it in below as well...

Q: You blogged recently about the importance of answering the “Why do I care?” question when developing social media campaigns. What are some examples of brands doing a good job of providing their customers with something of value?

A: There is a mad rush right now to get more people to “Like” you on Facebook. Success is being measured as how many fans you have and not necessarily on how much those fans are actually engaging with your brand. There are plenty of ways to get people to “Like” you. You can give them free stuff like Starbucks did originally with their ice cream and like Einstein’s Bagels did with a morning bagel and cream cheese. You can use other platforms to drive “Likes” like Bing did by giving people Farmville cash when they “Liked” Microsoft’s Bing Facebook page. And then there are a host of underground spam merchants that will guarantee you “Likes” for pennies a piece. But getting fans is only part of the strategy, keeping them there is much more important. And challenging!

So what should you do? Simply put yourself in the shoes of the consumer. What would you want to see? What would make you come back again after you got your free stuff or were drawn there by a promotion or piece of exclusive content?

There is a lot of noise out there. The typical person only “Likes” a handful of brands. They have so much going on in their lives and they are engaging with their friends multiple times of day on Facebook, so if you are a brand, you really need to stand out. Some of the brands that are doing a great job with this:

Skittles – For Skittles, it’s all about weird content. Turns out there are about 18 Million who like to watch and interact with like-minded weirdos.

Starbucks – Yes, they are the leaders in social media, but why is that? Because they listen to their customers. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said that last year’s growth was largely due to the fact that they actually listened to their customers and that social media was a huge part of that.

GameStop – A year ago they didn’t have a Facebook page. Now they have 2.5 Million fans and one of the most active Facebook pages of any retailer. Why? Because they have video game fanatics running their social media properties. If you want to see game trailers first, reminisce about games of yore, or get to meet the people that make the biggest games, then you visit every day.

Mountain Dew – Dew drinkers love to live on the edge. They are young passionate action sports fans. Once a year Mountain Dew introduces a new flavor and when they do, they turn to their Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube fans to help them create every element from choosing the flavor to actually making the television commercials. There are few brands that give this kind of power to their fans.

Now step back. What are your favorite products? Why would you follow them on Facebook or Twitter? What could that bar of soap, that denim jean manufacturer, that potato chip maker do for you that would make you come back over and over?

That’s where you start.

Random Acts of Kindness

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Tue, 24 May 2011 02:13:00 +0000

In August, Fanscape will celebrate our thirteenth year in business. We started as a viral marketing company centered around helping musicians connect with their fans, and we've grown into a social media marketing agency focused on helping major brands connect with their customers.

There wasn't a MySpace or a Facebook back in the early days. Nor was their eCommerce or Email / CRM marketing. Most music artists just communicated with their fans from the stage and only a handful kept up fan clubs through traditional mail.

The idea we had at Fanscape was to take the mailing list sheets that artists often left at the merchandise counter and actually enter the information into a database (something that rarely happened). Our theory was that if we could keep track of the fans and actually communicate with them, you could tell them when the next album was coming out or when there would be another show in their town. All the research showed that the reason people didn't buy a new album or come to a show was because they didn't know about it. Our goal was to create a deeper bond between artists and their fans.

Here was another theory we had. What if you surprised fans with something no one else could get? Access! Our very first client was an extremely popular punk rock band from Seattle called, MxPx. Their fan base was rabid. When they toured, they would sell out every show. We helped build their database into the hundreds of thousands. We also created a paid subscription fan club where one of the special privileges was that as a member, you were always guaranteed to get a ticket to the show, even if it was sold out. About a year in, we had this idea; what if when you pick up your tickets, we surprised you with a backstage pass? We tried this in one city and you should have seen the fans faces when they picked up their tickets and realized they would actually get to meet the band. As you can imagine, the word spread and membership to the fan club doubled seemingly overnight.

We've tried to repeat this over the years and we still work it into many of the creative concepts for our brand marketing campaigns. Providing value to your customer is the key to great Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Always step back and put yourself into the shoes of the customer you are trying to reach and ask this question, "why would I care?" Why should they chose you over a competitor? Random acts of kindness go a long way in answering that question and creating a better bond between you and your customer.

My Presentation Today

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:00:00 +0000

Hi Everyone. This blog post is specifically geared towards the people who saw me speak today at the Rutgers Business School, 2011 Ethical Leadership Conference. I wanted to make sure that you could both view a copy of my presentation as well as get the links for everything I referenced. Thank you very much for listening to me speak and please don't hesitate to reach out to me with any questions.

Larry Weintraub
LarryW@Fanscape.com
(323) 785-7750

The whole presentation is embedded at the bottom of this post. Here are the links to some of the things I referenced in my presentation along with some added information.

During the presentation I told you about a handful of resources or items to check out. Those include:

The Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh) video that I showed. Here are the links to both the most recent one (the one I showed) and its predecessor:
Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh) - http://bit.ly/eG0vGV
Social Media Revolution - http://bit.ly/eHOAoD

Twitter.com - I recommended that you sign up and "follow" 10 - 20 people. Just listen, don't feel a need to speak. I really just want you to see how news gets delivered to you in this medium. When you go to Twitter.com, they actually have a link called, "Who to Follow" that can help you locate people you may want to follow based on your interest. Definitely start there. Also, when you click on that link, there is a search bar and you can just pop in the names of people you might know of that are on Twitter.

MyStarbucksIdea.com - This is the site that Starbucks built to help source new ideas for free from their customers and their employees.

Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) - WOMMA.org - The organization that guides social media agencies and word-of-mouth-marketing agencies with ethics and policies. The direct link to the Code of Conduct is: http://womma.org/ethics/code/

Socialgovernance.com - The site to find social media policies. The direct link to that list of policies is: http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php. You'll find over 160 policies here and you can even search by industry.

Intel's Social Media Guidelines Policy - I recommended that you check this one policy out specifically because it's fairly short and covers a lot of the bases. - http://intel.ly/intelpolicy

Pecha Kucha

INNOVATIONS

2. Social Commerce / Social Shopping - This is your Groupon, Yelp, Gilt Group, Living Social. Flash sales that entice you to try new retailers at a tremendous discount.

4. Mobile - We've been waiting for the mobile explosion for years. Thank Apple for tipping it over with the iPhone and now Google's Android software. Everything we do online is headed towards mobile.

Brands

11. Dr Scholl's for Her - Good example of social media best practices, ethics, and social policies in this Facebook page.

12. Starbucks - They lead in social media. They recently embraced the concept of Near Field Communication (NFC) which enables a person to pay for their coffee with their phone. Just have the barista scan your Starbucks app.

13. Bose - Great customer service via Twitter

14. Mountain Dew - Marketing and Market Research, crowdsourced their new flavor from their community via Facebook, Twitter, video, and more.

15. Old Spice - Direct response via YouTube as a result of people Tweeting, blogging, and Talking on Facebook about the ad campaign. Sales reportedly increased 106% during the month of the campaign.

RESOURCES

And below is my full presentation if you want to see that too.

Rutgers Ethical Leadership Conference

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and if you saw my presentation and have any comments, please feel free to leave them here or email me at LarryW@Fanscape.com.

Is Social Media Making Us Less Social

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 07:54:00 +0000

Today I had lunch with my father. During our meal he became the second person in one day to tell me that he worried that social networking might be making us less social as human beings. And tonight something happened. I looked at my Facebook page and counted nearly 200 people wishing me a Happy Birthday. Last year I wrote a blog post on the same day as today and expressed how happy I was to see nearly 100 birthday wishes. So in one year the number has doubled. And my Facebook friends have not grown that much percentage-wise because I've become far pickier about who I accept.

So there is a definite argument here against what my dad said today. Thanks to social media, specifically Facebook, I just had a lot of people, and yes, I do know most if not all of them, say hello and wish me a great day. The majority of which I haven't spoken to in years. I even struck up some great conversations and reminisced about fantastic events in my life. All of which wouldn't have happened without Facebook. I still would have gotten a dozen phone calls or so, but I have to admit, I feel really special today. A lot of people went out of their way to write me a note. And I loved writing them all back to thank them.

So no, social media doesn't make us less social, it makes us more social. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Thank you everyone for the wonderful birthday wishes. And for all of you who told me to have a great day, know that I did in fact have a great day!

Ronald Reagan Invented Foursquare...

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 21:46:00 +0000

...and other things I learned at SXSW.

How is that for a headline? It is a quote from mega new media/tech publisher and conference guru, Tim O'Reilly during a one-on-one interview he did with Jason Calacanis on Friday at this year's SXSW conference. O'Reilly told the story of how the government/military GPS program was made public during Reagan's presidency paving the way for today's location-based maps and corresponding applications.

I'm a longtime veteran of SXSW Music, but only a sophomore at SXSW Interactive. This year's SXSWi was incredible with attendance surging between 15,000 - 20,000 attendees. A collection of techies, brands, nerds, hipsters, and foodies came together to learn, meet, eat, and drink.

This year's standout technology was group messaging with GroupMe and Beluga leading the charge. The idea here is that you invite a small group of friends to follow and interact with you, thus avoiding all the clutter and keeping tabs on just the specific people you are most interested in hearing from. That said, plenty of people were using last year's darlings Foursquare and year before favorite Twitter to communicate where they were and what they were doing.

Celebrities were abound with sightings of Ashton Kutcher, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Pee Wee Herman stopping by parties, panels, and the IFC Crossroads House for interviews.

Also standing out were some significant brand activations. Chevy was cutting into the local cab business by providing attendees with free rides in their Volts and other new cars, AT&T supplied much-needed phone recharge centers, and Pepsi had the largest party zone featuring Foursquare-sponsored four square tournaments and plenty of free PepsiMax.

Panels were spread out amongst numerous venues and standouts were AT&T's head of social media Chris Baccus explaining the complexities of handling customer complaints via Facebook and Twitter, R/GA's top brass advising on how to avoid your brand becoming obsolete and Wieden+Kennedy presenting the Old Spice case study to a packed room that left hundreds turned away at the door.

While the dense crowds at the Driskill and Four Season hotels made business meetings a challenge, there was still a lot of networking getting done. Despite the occasional feeling of claustrophobia and exhaustion, SXSW continues to be the most informative and fun conference of the year.

Social Giving for Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:44:00 +0000

A few weeks back I shared a note about LivingSocial's Amazon deal. My intention was less about sharing a great deal, and more about demonstrating the volume of redemption taking place in this new social commerce space. Yesterday LivingSocial went global. In a great way. Their offer (which has been extended for a two day period vs the normal 24 hours) is a 100% match of your $5 donation to the Red Cross on behalf of the victims of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. As of the time I'm writing this, LivingSocial members have given nearly $900,000 and with the matching contribution, they are on their way to $2 Million. One of the best deals yet!

Technology and Social Media Predictions for 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 23:48:00 +0000

Forgive me if you've already seen my predictions for where technology is headed this year, but if you haven't, they are below. I worked on these last week and first uploaded to my company blog and then published them in my company newsletter yesterday. Let me know if you agree or disagree...

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At the beginning and end of each year, recaps of the previous year are always prevalent. Lists of best songs, movies, and books are the norm in blogs, newspapers, and magazines. So too are predictions of what is to come, especially in the technology and marketing/advertising space. At Fanscape, we also have our opinions about what we expect to see in the coming year. What we’ve compiled here is a list of our predictions along with a few others we’ve seen that we completely agree with.

1. Smartphones as common as the toaster. 2011 is the year smartphones take over. With an expectation of smartphones nearing 50% penetration in the US, Verizon adding the iPhone, and tablets taking over, we’re all going to be walking, talking, emailing, playing, and sharing while we chew gum. Mobile extensions to your social marketing plans are a must. Optimize your messaging for iPhone, iPad, Galaxy, Blackberry, Droid, et al.

2. Companies will integrate social feedback into their decision making process. In 2011, we will see a growing number of companies finally go beyond using social channels merely for building awareness and providing support. Expect to see a rise in companies who, by end of year, will be recognized for socially-informed innovation, customer focus and work environment, much like Zappos and Amazon were a few years back. (Predicted by Ravit Lichtenberg on Read, Write, Web)

3. Social Commerce. People like their Facebook, that’s where they spend most of their time online. Facebook would prefer you didn’t leave. So, why not buy all your stuff right there? Right now on Facebook you can book your Delta Airlines flight and buy your buddy a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream. We’re definitely going to see more of this transactional business directly on Facebook this year. And then we’ll start seeing it in other social platforms, not to mention on our phones.

4. Website Evolution. Websites will continue to become more social. Should I have a website or should I just be on Facebook? You need both. In fact, you need to be in more places: LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, WordPress/Tumblr/Posterous. And this list will grow. Start by making your website more social. Integrate Facebook open graph; allow people to “like” and rate the content on your website. Overarching plan: give people a reason to return or else they’ll grab your store hours or client list and never come back.

5. Groupon: here today… Prediction is that we’ll burn out on the current incarnation by year’s end. But that doesn’t mean it is going away. Let’s call it what it is, the digital version of the guy with the sandwich board handing out flyers. Retailers have more opportunities to drive people into their stores than ever before. Ask a retailer if they liked their Groupon (and similar) experience and about half will say no. Consider this a brilliant innovation or a retail marketing disrupter, but we’ll see more of this. Google wasn’t going to spend a fortune buying Groupon for their health. This is the evolution of targeted advertising. Foursquare had you check in, Groupon had you buy a deal, expect a merging of the two: meet your friends at the local bar, the whole table gets a discount. Reward the loyal and those who return, not just the lookie loos.

6. The Digital Talent Pool The real talent—the ones you really want—are entrepreneurial and creative, and they’re not waiting around in your lobby to get a job. They’re trying it on their own. Media outlets will find future talent on YouTube, iTunes, or other popular audio/video on-demand sites like BlogTalkRadio. NBC Universal announced an initiative last week where they will select 20 popular “tweeters” in each market to create content for their websites, broadcast segments, and other distribution channels. (- Jessica Northey on Social Media Today)

7. Video, not just for looking at babies and cats. YouTube is the number 4 most viewed website and guess who just cracked the top 20? Netflix. (per Alexa) Most of the sites on the rest of the list serve up plenty of video too (Facebook, Yahoo!, CNN, etc.). Pay attention to sites like eHow and Howcast if you want to know how to build a table, bake a cake, or change a car battery. People like visuals. Show and tell is easier than ever and again, it’s what people want. And going back to mobile, people can watch this on the go now too.

8. Digital and Social immersion. Merge radio frequency identification (RFID) with smartphones and social networking and you complete the loop of total immersion in connectedness. One word: EpicMix. See what they are doing at Vail ski resorts and you’ll get it. Your ski pass is embedded with a unique ID. It knows where you are, how many miles you’ve skied, it tells you where your friends are, and it provides a platform to add photos and video. You unlock badges that automatically update to your Facebook page. You don’t need to do anything. Imagine the extensions to shopping, dining, and travel.

9. Cause Marketing. Expect brands to integrate a little extra feel good into their strategies. Over the last two years charity started at home, but we’re starting to loosen our purse strings a little bit. When it’s apples to apples, we’ll lean towards the more socially conscious product. And technology is making this easy through things like text donations for NPR podcasts and fundraising apps such as kickstarter. Remember this term too: Crowdfunding.

10. Social Search. We put this at the end because it really started last year. We just don’t believe everyone quite understands it yet. At least not its implications for brands and their products. Realize that when people now have conversations about you via open social networks (i.e. Twitter – for the moment), that filters into the search query. Immediately. So when you are looking up where to buy a barbecue, you’ll see real time conversations about the exact same thing!

Innovations and honorable mentions, a.k.a. things to keep an eye on this year: Quora, Social Scrapbooking, Social news on your tablet (e.g. Flipboard), near field communication (i.e. mobile payments, mobile ticketing, QR code reading, etc.), entertainment check-in apps (e.g. GetGlue, Philo, Miso), and of course, web-enabled televisions.

Amazon Gift Card on Living Social

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 21:07:00 +0000

If you haven’t already picked up your Amazon gift card from LivingSocial, you really should. Right now they are over 750,000 redemptions.

I had a dinner with some friends last night and explained to them what LivingSocial/Groupon was all about. (see that note below) Then today this too-good-to-be-true offer came in which just emphasized my point on why people love these companies.

Also, I just caught this article in Mediapost which explains this even more. i.e. Amazon is more invested than just this deal of the day!

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LivingSocial Hits Jackpot with Amazon Deal

Posted January 19th, 2011 at 12:56 pm by Gavin O'Malley

It looks like Groupon rival LivingSocial hit it big this week after offering members a $20 Amazon gift card for $10. “In just the first few hours of the sale, users have already purchased over 243,000 coupons,” reports ReadWriteWeb. How did LivingSocial land such a sweat deal? Well, as you may recall, Amazon invested $175 million into the startup in December. As such, Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Jeremy Lew calls this week’s deal “the first step of operational integration from that investment.” According to ReadWriteWeb, “Some are predicting the deal is on a course to outperform the previous blockbuster daily deal, when Groupon offered $25 off a $50 purchase at the Gap.” That resulted in some $13 million worth of coupons being sold. With nearly a day left to go, the LivingSocial deal had already sold over $2 million worth of coupons Wednesday morning. The final sales figure likely means little to Amazon, which is more interested in marketing the LivingSocial brand. Indeed, with Amazon’s help, it’s not hard to imagine LivingSocial achieving Groupon-like heights.

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From: Larry Weintraub
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 12:01 PM
To: My Friends
Subject: FW: 50% Off Amazon.com Gift Card

Last night at dinner we had a conversation about Groupon / LivingSocial. Today this came in from LivingSocial. $20 gift card for $10 from Amazon. No expiration date, limit one.

On a typical day and a typical deal, LivingSocial or Groupon will get anywhere form 300 – 3,000 people to buy one of these offers. Today’s offer from LivingSocial is already over 650,000 and will probably hit 1 million today. So, if you wonder why Google was prepared to pay nearly $6 Billion for Groupon (which they declined and I bet we see a similar offer coming soon for LivingSocial), now you know why. They will do $20 Million in business today alone. Doesn’t mean they are profitable, just gives you an idea of how big these things are.

By the way, I recommend you sign up to LivingSocial today and get this deal. It only lasts til the end of the day and then it’s gone. You can unsubscribe after that if you don’t want to get emails every day from them. But hek, it’s $10 free to spend at Amazon.

Larry

Free Books From Google

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 19:53:00 +0000

In a long-anticipated move into the e-book market, Google has officially launched its massive e-bookstore, bringing more than 3 million books, many of which are available free of charge, to any device that has app capabilities or has a web browser.

But what makes Google E-books better than those already dominating the space such as Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Apple? We’ve compiled the top 5 reasons why Google E-Books is changing up the game.

Free Material
Everybody loves getting something for nothing. Google E-books provides you with roughly three million books free of charge. Google E-books has the largest selection of public domain titles, allowing users to download tons of noteworthy titles without spending a penny.

Cross Platform Support
Google E-books supports any type of device that has access to a web browser. Instead of requiring users to purchase the titles through a single online store to read only on compatible readers, Google E-books allows customers to not only buy books from their own store, but also from any other online vendor that sells books in either PDF or EPUB formats. These downloads are then read by any device that has web browsing capabilities. Google E-Books works cross-platform with computer web browsers, smartphones with the Google eBook reader app, and eReader devices such as the iPad, Nook, Kobo eReader, and Aluratek eBook.

Automatic Syncing
Cross-platform usage would be pointless if nothing synced up. As you read your books on your computer, Android, iPhone, or iPad devices, Google E-Books will automatically sync across all platforms. If you begin reading in the morning on your iPad, you will be able to pick up right where you left off on your Android or iPhone device on your way to work.

Impressive List of Publishers
Google E-Books may have just launched, but nearly 4,000 publishers are already providing the store with content. Of these 4,000 publishers, almost all of the major players have jumped on board including Macmillan, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette just to name a few.

A New Approach
Google’s approach to the e-book phenomenon is different from those already dominating the space. Because of the way Google decided to take on the challenge, they’ve created a brand new ecosystem which makes both retailers and affiliates, as well as publishers, all part of the e-book selling process for the very first time.

[Co-authored with Jonathan Menager and previously published on Fanscape's Digitally Approved blog]

New Facebook Profiles

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:46:00 +0000

Just days after the official rollout of the overhauled Facebook Messaging platform, another new and dramatic change has been released on the Facebook website; an updated social profile.

Unlike the updated Facebook Messaging service which is only available to those who receive an invite, the updated Facebook profile is available right now to anyone who wants it. To do so, simply follow this link and click the green button at the top to activate it.

In a recent Facebook blog update, the changes to the Facebook Profile page were described in great detail. To save you some time, here is the gist of what they said:

What’s new?
In a nutshell, the updated Facebook profiles are getting a completely new look along with a few new features that will not only make them more functional and easier to read, but also easier to update. This major overhaul can be broken down into three main parts.

1. Profile Summary
A brief synopsis of each person will now appear at the top of their new profile page and will include things such as where you work, who you’re in a relationship with, where you go to school, what you’re studying, and if you can speak any other languages. The brief summary explains who you are, and below that is a collection of photos you are recently tagged in that shows what you’ve been up to lately. These are all things that Facebook considers “conversation starters” and aims to provide you with a little background about the person you’re looking at.

2. Featured Friends
This is one of the more interesting updates to the Facebook profile. It allows you to feature friends on the newly created sidebar that displays your friends list. To date, the only time you could really single a relationship out was when you accepted a relationship request with a significant other. Now, Facebook gives you the opportunity to split up your friends list into different categories, such as colleagues at work, peers at school, family members, or just the friends you are closer with.

3. Interface Changes
Several of the interface changes will probably seem strange and hard to navigate at first, due largely to the fact that a lot of info has either moved positions or been removed all together. The tabs that were once at the top have changed to links on the left, and your friends are now separated by groups on in the left hand side of your profile. As more and more people opt in for the new profile change, you should get used to this positioning and it shouldn’t be a problem.

One of the more useful updates to the overhauled interface, however, would be the addition of infinite scroll. Instead of having to click a link at the bottom of the profile to “see more”, as users keep scrolling down the page keeps loading more content.

In the end, the overall point of the profile overhaul was to enable users to update more often and to do so easier. It looks like they've done just that.

For more information about the changes made to the Facebook profiles and a brief blurb about how it can help assist advertisers, check out Charlene Li’s write up here. If you are interested in a photo walkthrough of the new changes as well as a short promotional video, check out this Mashable post.

[Co-authored with Jonathan Menager and previously published on Fanscape's Digitally Approved blog]

Facebook Messages Made Easy

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:34:00 +0000

Recently Facebook announced its new Facebook Messages platform. The long-anticipated product, which was originally thought to be a Facebook email service, turns out to not be an email service at all but rather a complete reimaging of conversational messaging. Modeled after Facebook Chat, Facebook Messages is comprised of three core components: seamless messaging, cross-platform conversation history, and the social inbox.

Seamless Messaging
The seamless messaging system provides users with a simple way to keep in constant contact with each other and carry on a conversation – in real time. This is different from email because the Facebook Message system is modeled after Facebook Chat. Facebook removed the subject line and encourages users to communicate with each other as if it were a verbal conversation. Users can send messages back and forth seamlessly and pick up conversations right where they left off.

Cross-Platform Conversation History
Once you’ve signed up to use the free Facebook Messages platform, you’ll be given an @Facebook.com email address. When you access your account, all conversations that take place going forward, whether they be via email, text messages, instant messaging, Twitter updates, and Facebook posts (just for starters), will record in one seamless stream. You will have a complete conversation history no matter where the conversation took place.

The Social Inbox
The new social inbox is intended to stay clean, spam-free, and well organized. When you log on to your Facebook Messages account, the only messages you’ll see are messages from your friends and their friends. That’s it. You’ll have the ability to adjust your privacy settings to determine exactly what you see and will have the ability to filter everything you don’t want to bounce back or save into a folder called, “Other.”

Facebook Messages is rolling out slowly and is currently available to users on an invitation-only basis. It’s too early to tell just how successful it will be, but the screen shots and promotional video seems promising. Will this be a game changer? We’ll soon see.

(For more information on Facebook messages, including a promotional video about the new features, as well as a slide show with a Facebook Messages walkthrough check out this article on Mashable.Com.)

[Co-authored with Jonathan Menager and previously published on Fanscape's Digitally Approved blog]

Where did I go?

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 02:34:00 +0000

I've been away from my blog for too long. Too much travel, too much stuff got in the way. Not a good excuse, but the truth.

I thought about my blog a lot over the past couple of months. I really started to wonder what it's all about. Who is it for? Who reads it? Is it just a vanity thing for me?

The majority of the comments I get are from people who run small businesses and are looking for advice on how to help them market their business. I need to pay attention to that, and from now on I will. I may sprinkle in some personal things along with some larger level things that I've learned from helping major companies embrace social media. But going forward I will try to concentrate on helping small businesses with my blog.

I've recently co-written some blog posts on my company blog that I'm going to copy into this blog. So keep an eye out over the next few days for some hopefully useful insight into what's going on with Facebook, Google, etc. that can hopefully help you understand how those outlets can help you in both your business and your life.

If you have questions, let me know. I'm happy to answer anything and hopefully you'll allow me to share that with everyone who reads my blog.

Law Enforcement International Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Weintraub) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Hello to everyone that saw me speak today at the 2010 Law Enforcement Torch Run International Conference. In my presentation I referenced that you would be able to find all the things I highlighted in my "Pecha Kucha" part of my presentation.

This is only the second time I've given this speech and I'm still fine-tuning it. I tried to cater today's presentation towards fund raising rather than brand social media marketing, but the slides and the content were very similar to a speech I gave a couple of weeks ago, so if you browse this blog, you'll see a nearly identical description of slides and link to the overall presentation.

The presentation I gave is based on what I call "Social Media Now" where I share my philosophy on how to help you focus your social media efforts and drive sales as a result (or in this case fund raising, engagement, awareness to your charitable efforts). I've embedded the whole presentation at the bottom of this, but it may be a bit confusing without all my commentary. I'm one of those guys who hates lots of words in a Powerpoint presentation, so forgive me if it doesn't mean much to you. But this post is especially geared towards the people who saw me speak and wanted to know a little more.

Okay, here is the Pecha Kucha (remember, it was broken into 4 parts, 5 slides on each topic: Brands doing great work in social, Innovations in digital and social, Stats to help support why social is great for your company, and Resources to help you manage your social media marketing)...

BRANDS
1. Starbucks - Specifically MyStarbucksIdea.com

2. Bose - Great customer service via Twitter

3. Mountain Dew - Marketing and Market Research, crowdsourced their new flavor from their community via Facebook, Twitter, video, and more.

4. Old Spice - Direct response via YouTube as a result of people Tweeting, blogging, and Talking on Facebook about the ad campaign. Sales reportedly increased 106% during the month of the campaign.

5. Ford - Introduced the 2011 Ford Explorer via Facebook.

INNOVATIONS

6. Location Based Social - Foursquare, Facebook "Places," Gowalla, Loopt, MyTown, etc. Yes it's all the rage. Just understand that this is the tip of the iceberg. Soon when you are walking by a store your phone will buzz and offer you a coupon if you come inside.

7. Social Commerce / Social Shopping - This is your Groupon, Yelp, Gilt Group, Living Social. Flash sales that entice you to try new retailers at a tremendous discount.

8. Social Gaming - Farmville, Mafia Wars - People love playing games. We're seeing extensions of this now with apps like SCVNGR that turn your shopping and traveling into a game. Again, people love games!

9. Mobile - We've been waiting for the mobile explosion for years. Thank Apple for tipping it over with the iPhone and now Google's Android software. Everything we do online is headed towards mobile.

10. Video - Pay attention to video. You've got YouTube as the leader, but you have new extensions showing up such as UStream which is live video streaming. I recently watched Zappos do their company meeting live on Ustream.

STATS
11. Altimeter Group did a report that studied the top 100 Brands and found that the ones fully engaged in social media saw sales go up 18%. Brands on the bottom of the social utilization scale saw sales drop 6%.

12. Social Media Impacts Brands

72% Feel a stronger connection
68% Feel better served
74% Have a more positive image
70% More willing to engage

13. Social Media Impacts Brands

64% Improved opinion of company when friend interacts
52% Choose to fan/follow brand to help showcase their personality online

14. Facebook Stats - We all know that they're 500Million + users and that 1/2 their users login every day. We should also note that:
Facebook is quickly replacing Google as the #1 driver of traffic to websites

60% of fans are likely to recommend a brand after "liking" them
51% of FB fans are more likely to buy from the brands they follow

15. Infographic - Good infographic about how we consume and interact with media daily. We spend 9 hours a day watching tv, playing video games, Tweeting, on social networks, etc.

RESOURCES

17. Blogs and Newsletters that help me stay on top of new technologies, specifically new apps, new websites, and new social networks include: Tech Crunch, Mashable, and Read, Write, Web

18. Free web tools to help you see what people are saying about you (we often call these "Reputation Management" tools) include: Search.Twitter.com (for Twitter search), Ice Rocket and Blog Pulse (to search blogs and message boards)

19. Pay tools to help you see what people are saying. These also help determine the level of influence of the people talking about you and the positive/negative/neutral sentiment towards you. Prices range from $500 a month to many thousands. This is just a sampling, there are many companies doing this, but the ones I use and pay attention to most are Radian6, Social Radar, and Sysomos.

20. Facebook Management Platforms. There are many companies now that help you manage your Facebook pages, blogs, and Twitter. This can be especially helpful if you are a major brand and you need to manage hundreds of thousands of fans and you want to add new features on a regular basis without having to constantly pay to build new apps. These include: Buddy Media, Context Optional, Vitrue, Involver, and Hoot Suite (Hoot Suite is free where the others all cost several thousands of dollars - Hoot Suite is also not as advanced as the others and is more about managing conversations than adding new features and apps).

And below is my full presentation if you want to see that too.

Social Media Now Law Enforcement Pres

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and if you saw my presentation and have any comments, please feel free to leave them here or email me at LarryW@Fanscape.com.