FRANKthoughts

Should you use social media tools? Should social media be used to enhance your sales and get more eyeballs? How about a “social media campaign”? The simple answer to all these questions is no. Earned media (aka social media) should be practiced all the time. It should have an annual plan. It should be treated as a customer service tool. Have you ever heard about a customer service campaign?  right. So what IS the way to go? Here’s FRANkVizeum’s three steps to earned media strategy. We call it “Immersion” and it’s about listening, learning and researching.

Step 1. Listen and learn – survey your most passionate lovers. Start with your employees and the people who open your newsletter. Ask them how they feel about you, what would they like to see and where are they spending time online. You can also ask what is the most frustrating thing about your industry. This will bring you GOLD.

Step 2. Create a SWAT analysis of your brand online. What’s your online profile? what are your competitors doing? what is the industry doing and what trends can you see emerging? You’ll be surprised what you’ll find when you search youtube, flickr and twitter for your competitors brands.

Step 3. Collate the data and brainstorm. Think about management. Do you have the resources to invest in this space? Imagine having a customer service/call center without people who answer calls. Silly right? so there’s no point  in creating a faceboook group without a community manager. Think about the value for your users not only about the traffic you’ll get.

What do you think about these steps? We hope to post a case study next month and keep you posted on our progress. Meanwhile here’s the latest about “social media” from other blogs:

Where Social Media Fits Into The Marketing Mix – Daniel Oyston

Social media? It’s not actually about selling anything… – Stephen Collins

Marketing: Answering the wrong question – Jonathan Crossfield

Self interest or principle? – Ben Shepherd

It has been a good seven months since we launched Nuffnang a blog marketing community into Australia.  Nuffnang’s Asia Pacific blogger network currently comprises over 100,000 bloggers. Nuffnang Australia has attracted over 700 top Australian bloggers to our community.

Our blog community gives us a strategic advantage in providing brands, social media agencies, media agencies, creative agencies, and PR agencies a one stop solution to connect with bloggers.  We have provided measurability to blog marketing campaigns where clients used to count Technorati and Google Blog search as their only tools to find the best bloggers for their campaigns.  We have demonstrated our ability to implement campaigns in a few days that previously used to take months. Some notable clients that have engaged Nuffnang Australia include ANZ bank, Village Roadshow, Seek Volunteer, and Destination Gippsland.

Building a blog marketing community takes time. We’ve travelled around Australia to organise blog meet ups. We’ve met bloggers that are attracting over 10,000 blog views a day – eclipsing many magazine readerships such as Harpers or Madison. We’re constantly surprised as each fantastic blogger leads us to another even bigger blogger. Our goal is to build a lasting and trusting relationship – ultimately we have built a community of over 700 members. As part of our next growth strategy, we will look at further improving our connections with our blogging community. There will be structural changes to Nuffnang’s touch points (more to come) to better the experience (because it matters!) and a drive to increase our community members.

Meanwhile, we have also been tracking great research coming from Forrester and leading social media strategist Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang. It’s interesting to see the trends in brands in the U.S. engaging bloggers in different ways… here is a comprehensive list of sponsored conversations by Jeremiah.

A Running List of Sponsored Conversations

Here is Forrester’s report on the 3 common ways to market with bloggers – something we’re already achieving successfully through Nuffnang.

Thanks to all our guests who attended the second FRANkademy, we had a great time. Here’s a quick recap of what we focused on: We started by introducing our bought, owned and earned integrated approach. This is a new way of thinking that breaks down the barriers between traditional and social media by focusing on the brand and it’s relation to communication strategy. Bought – is everything you buy like TV airtime, radio, billboards, magazine space, banners and so on. Owned includes your logo, packaging, website and retail outlets. Earned is the dialogue you open with your customers, the word of mouth you generate, the links you get from other blogs, customer feedback and comments.

We then went to twitter 101. What’s an RT? #hashtag and  #followfriday? we dived deeper and explored twitter as a search engine, twitter for brands and twitter as a business platform. In our blog section we explained what value blogs can offer brands and what are the ways brands can talk with bloggers. We presented our approach with our own blog network Nuffnang, which is the biggest blog advertising network in Australia.

After the break we went through our case study for Melbourne’s GPO. This showed our way of thinking, focusing on longer term communication strategy as opposed to a short term marketing campaign. We talked about the starting point to any solution being learning and listening, a process we call “Immersion”. We ended by saying we feel “social media” is the elephant in the room, which people spend 90% of time talking about but only 10% doing it. We definitely hope to see this change soon. Thanks again to our audience from ganesh group, millionPlus, kidspot, Cricket Australia, Movember, JCDecaux, MKT, RDI marketing,  Val Morgan, Austereo, ARN and Fosters.

The next FRANkademy is on July 31 – for bookings simply comment with your name and email on this post. If anyone from Friday’s session has specific questions please leave a comment…or feel free to post.

Melbourne’s GPO Lexington bar opened its doors for the first time in a long time last night for the Harper’s BAZAAR and Belvedere Vodka Luxury Reborn 2009 Awards.

With a dress code “rock & roll couture” the evening was all about glamour with Belvedere Vodka cocktails circulating the room and many faces of fashion includng Arthur Galan, Scanlan and Theodore and Alannah Hill

Categories included:

1. The Luxury Reborn Award for LIGHT – jewellery
2. The Luxury Reborn Award for PEACE – beauty/spas
3. The Luxury Reborn Award for PASSION – bespoke/couture
4. The Luxury Reborn Award for INNOVATION – retail space
5. The Luxury Reborn Award for LOVE – restaurateur
6. The Luxury Reborn Award for SPACE – interior design/architect
7. The Luxury Reborn Award for EXPERIENCE – travel
8. The Luxury Reborn Award for WISDOM – sommelier/bartender
9. The Luxury Reborn Award for FUN – bar
10. The Luxury Reborn Award for EXPRESSION – the modern arts

Well done Harpers for such a fabulous evening and hopefully this will be the start of many more events to come at The Lexington bar.

It seems like the new FRANkVizeum hit a big nerve last week. The amount of accusation, slant and bad mouthing we got will make you think we murdered a koala. No, we simply did some harmless chalk/potato+water graffiti on the sidewalk outside media agencies and clients.
But web mobs don’t bother to find out. They simply burn before reading. We love to hear feedback, especially if you disagree. But we expect an adult discussion, with no anonymity.
OK, enough about the trolls, the thing that really bothers me is when someone I respect is heading the mob for no apparent reason. mUmBRELLA, our favorite media news blog got all stirred up about FRANkVizeum.
Tim, I’m really not sure what got you so upset. Is it about the graffiti? About the PR release that in your opinion could have been better written? Your post from the 21 June is full of “clever” phrases that belittle FRANk and Vizeum and most of it is referring to something that happened in 2003! None of it, except your opinion on the PR release, is of any real value. It’s a personal slant. Your post from the 22 June is equally surprising. Is it the legal issue that bothers you? What a stretch. Both posts headlines are so tabloid they’re more suited to appear in The Sun than mUmBRELLA.
Wait a sec… did you also have a crack at our logo for using capital letters? When was the last time you looked at your own logo? The final nail was quoting a troll comment from our blog. Did you bother to check the source? I didn’t think so.
None of the people who commented on this “epic fail” has bothered to read more than one post. No one seems to look at what we do or who we are. No one is following us on twitter.
If you did bother to take a deeper look you’ll know that Martyn, head of FRANkVizuem started an agency blog and twitter in October 2007. This makes him one of the earliest adopters of new technologies and “social media” in the Australian media landscape. All of the FRANkVizeum team is blogging. We have photos and names of contributors, we answer comments and we even have an option for ANYONE to write a blog post. We offer free online strategy sessions (FRANkademy), we’re helping non profits (like Movember) and we constantly writing about environmental and social issues.  Is this your idea of wanking?
FRANkVizeum is different and we’re proving it every day. We are on the cutting edge of what you call “social media” and no, we don’t think using graffiti once every couple of years makes us not relevant, old or “cool”. But hey, it’s easier to light the torches and go burn a monster. It’s easier to order a death sentence than to examine the facts. It’s easier to post a slant comment than to give feedback, offer an opinion or start a conversation.

Today sees the beginning of a new era.
Vizeum has arrived on these shores as FRANkVizeum in Melbourne and Vizeum in Sydney.
Being part of Vizeum’s Global Network brings with it all sorts of BIG numbers…we’re now have 47 offices in 36 countries totalling over 2,500 staff with billings of US$5 Billion plus.
Vizeum, launched in 2003, is an independent media network and part of the Aegis Group plc, the world’s largest independent media group. The group also includes Synovate, Isobar, iprospect and Carat.

We are a new type of agency that goes beyond the world of advertising’s traditional media planning and buying dictate which is too often stuck in the old paradigm.

Our targeted stencils (Sydney example above) go some way to support this point by challenging the accepted norms of targeting broad audiences “P25-54″ (all people aged 25-54) and the obsession of accountability by percentages such as 48.76% 2+ reach etc. etc. Thanks to Media Tree for helping us make this happen.

It is time for change and for clients to get more from their communications; it is time for frankness about what is really working and what isn’t. We fuse audience motivation, brand truth and communications experience to create the perfect connection. Connections create a new level of emotional engagement which one dimensional planning by numbers can never attain. We are curious about people, we are passionate about the world out there, we love brands, we believe in speaking the truth about what’s right for you, we are imaginatively creative, we are in the moment – learning from the past but keen to gear up for the future. Connections are our DNA. It defines who we hire, who we work with and how we do things. It is an outlook, a way of being, and thinking that goes beyond tools and systems. It is easy to talk in the abstract about the ‘digital revolution’, and much harder to make sense of the forces that are transforming the media, and to harness them to drive coherent communication strategies that drive business transformation. We help clients to take on that challenge.

William Gibson said that “The future has already arrived. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” This is why we put effort in being early adopters and understanding quickly what the digital progress means for our clients.
We are interested in clients who want more: more stimuli from their partners, more curiosity about what makes consumers tick, more boldness, more frankness and more inquisitiveness about going beyond the norm.
It’s time for a change.
Don’t you think?

VW have developed an interesting new car campaign, teaming up with Twitter to recommend to users what their next new car should be (a Volkswagen, of course).

Through online flash creative executions, users enter their Twitter username in the creative.  The ad will then analyse the content of their Twitter posts, and based on this ‘personality type’ recommend a vehicle from their range.

It probably isn’t overly scientific, but it’s a fun way to tap into the curiosity of the online users it is targeting.  My Twitter account resulted in a VW Polo recommendation.

Kevin Rudd’s Twitter profile spat out a Beetle as the right choice for the modern, sauce-bottle-shaking PM.  Ashton Kutcher’s search suggested a 7-seat Routan minivan to lug around all of Ashton, Bruce and Demi’s rugrats.

What does your Twitter account say about you?

Launched recently is a new small business podcast from Small Business Big Marketing (SBBM)
Four small business owners chew the cud with Tim Reid and Luke Moulton .
This month the guys talk to Flip Shelton writer & muesli maker, Mel Bridge founder of GXY recruitment, Darren, the co-owner of St Kilda Boat Sales and John the founder of Wicked Campers
As any small business operator will know it can be a lonely business so the idea of this initiative is to create a forum for collective learnings and opinions. I’ve thought this has been an opportunity for a while and hope it gathers momentum.
The problem with most other small business sites such as this is that they can be bewildering and alienating. SBBM comfortably engages with successful entrepreneurs and provides the opportunity for dialogue and sharing.
It’s early days and the guys are finding their manner and tone but i can see this expanding to being a hub for all small business aspirants in time.
Great idea and good energy.

Hang in there with this one…it’s well worth it.
FACT: Connecting consumers with ads that interrupt content is on the wane. More brands want consumer-engagement, brand-relevance and shared experience to endear themselves to their brand communities.
FACT: Most people want to download virus free/safe freemusic but would prefer it if the artists received some money, from somewhere, otherwise the music industry will be increasingly choked of revenue and its lifeblood will be threatened.
OPPORTUNITY: Create a site where consumers can download music for free (pretty much any music they want similar to itunes) but in this case brands foot the cost…some of which goes to artists. In return brands can take the opportunity to externalise their personality through their content, reversing the interruption model.
EXAMPLE: I want to download Kashmir by Led Zeppelin. I go to GUVERA and search for Kashmir. Up comes say five brands that will ‘allow’ me to download this for free…for example Jack Daniels, Heineken, Greenpeace, Harley Davidson and Nike.
The brands will be listed by preference that best reflect your personality profile & interests (necessary to submit when registering).
Let’s say a young mum decides to download Kings of Leon “via” carsales.com.au as one their driving tracks…all good. It connects with a car-shift opportunity and endears the brand to this influential buyer/seller group.
The challenge for the brands will be to tailor creative relevance to their now easily segmented brand communities. As a brand how you want-to-be can be segmented subject to who’s looking. Interesting i think.
Planned to launch globally in the next few months (Australia in July) this will be a great one to check out. Music is the first engagement ‘medium’ and there are plans to evolve with movies, games and blogs.
Be interested in views and ideas…