Who are the people in your social network neighborhood?

Last month Nielsen’s Claritas division released data profiling the users of various social networks — which has been picked up by bloggers, social media consultants, like my friends at ClickMarkets, and now, today, by NPR.

In the piece, produced by Laura Sydell, teenagers talked about the social differences of social networks.

MySpace vs. Facebook

• Sixteen-year-old Nico Kurt (who attends an elite, private high school) lays out his view of the MySpace users this way: “It seems trashy to me. The only people who use it are trashy people.”
• “No one uses MySpace,” says 17-year-old Halie Pacheco, a student at The Urban School. She likes Facebook. “It’s safer and more high class,” she explains
• “By ‘high class’ I think she means organized,” adds 16-year-old Olivia Block. “With MySpace there’s a lot of clutter.”
• “I have friends who are white,” says 19-year-old Diego Luna. “They are my white people friends and they are mostly on Facebook. That’s why I use Facebook. My brown people are on MySpace.”
• Benito Rodriguez, 16, adds, “Not to be racist or anything, but there’s more white kids on Facebook.”

Virtual Imitates Real Life

The data as well as the students’ insights point to two truisms about social networks — whether online or in real life that marketers should remember:

• Birds of a feather flock together:  Demographers, social scientists and market segmentation experts like Claritas, know that humans gravitate toward people that look, think and act like them.  Look at any physical neighborhood or organization and you will find striking similarities of the neighbors or members based on race, income, education and even political views.
• Know your neighborhoods: Profiling and targeting are just as important online as offline.  Don’t just hop on a social network because it’s the most popular.  Learn who lives in that neighborhood.  Then, think about the profile of your desired target.  Would they live there? If so, that’s the network you want to join.

Mad Men: Boomers Rising

This was originally written for — and published in – MediaPost’s Engage: Boomers on October 12, 2009.

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world and everywhere you turn, people are racing to embrace AMC’s Mad Men, a drama about an advertising agency circa early 1960s, on the eve of the political and social upheavals that would define the Boomers.  First, it was the marketing and advertising Twitterati converting their avatars into Mad Men characters this summer in anticipation of the show’s return; then the Emmys who conferred no less than 16 nominations to the show, which ultimately won best drama, and now Sesame Street, always au courant on cultural trends, with their sly nod to Mad Men.  And, in reaching this broad intergenerational audience, creator Matt Weiner may have inadvertently done more to introduce the Boomers to a new generation of Madison Avenue denizens than any generational anthropologist or media planner.

For the record, Weiner was not looking to add to the Boomer nostalgia canon. Instead, he was more intrigued with the America of the mid-1950s and early 60s; a time of peace and prosperity when bucolic suburbia enticed America to its leafy streets, well groomed lawns, and shiny new schools.  When husbands went to work in far away cities, mothers gathered at neighborhood coffee klatches and children — aka the Boomers – hung out unattended, un-play-dated, unscheduled. He wanted to tell the story of America at a time of surface happiness and inner dissatisfaction when the nation as a whole looked around and asked, “is this it? Is this as good as it gets?”

In capturing the cultural zeitgeist of the late 1950s/early 60s, Weiner gives non-Boomers a ringside briefing each week on the forces that ultimately form and fuel the Boomers’ rejection of the status quo.  Consider for example:

• The sexism that relegates smart career women like Joan to the secretarial pool or forces Peggy to make significant personal sacrifices to rise above that station.
• The racist segregation that prompts a restaurant manager to inquire if the black waiter is “bothering” Don in the first season when Don asks the waiter for his opinion on cigarette brands or startles Hollis, the black elevator attendant, in the third season when Pete Campbell asks him about television brands.
• The quintessential paradigm of suburban wife discontent that Betty Draper epitomizes and that Betty Friedan will chronicle in The Feminine Mystique (published, incidentally, in 1963) of college educated wives withering away in suburbia.
• The frequent drinking to numb the mundane-ness of their lives, which Roger Sterling insightfully notes to Don in the first season: you and your generation “drink for the wrong reasons.  My generation, we drink because it feels better than unbuttoning your collar, because we deserve it. We drink because it’s what men do…. Your kind, with your gloomy thoughts and your worries, you’re all busy licking some imaginary wound.”

Photo: Carin Baer for AMCTV

Boomers: Not Evident

And this briefing occurs with hardly a mention of the Boomers. They are present only on the periphery: as Don and Betty’s children, Sally, Bobby and new born, Gene; as advertising targets (“Pepsi for those who think young”) or, more recently, as two hitchhiking, pill popping teenagers willing to do anything to avoid the draft.  But, as Weiner and his writing staff work through season three and four, they will no doubt incorporate some of the upcoming social and political events that will bring these Boomer children into sharper relief – events such as the civil rights march on Washington, DC when Martin Luther King delivered his “I have a dream” speech, the publication of The Feminine Mystique, the succession of assassinations (John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X), and the arrival of the Beatles to America.  And, in doing so, they will continue to illuminate the Boomers for the two million plus 18-49 year olds who tune in each week – including the new generation of Madison Avenue denizens.

The Beatles: Rockband

This piece was originally posted on MediaPost’s Engage: Boomers’ Blog.

In the opening credits of “A Hard Day’s Night,” the 1964 mock-u-mentary, the clean-cut, youthful Beatles are seen madly scampering through the streets of London, dodging throngs of frenzied, worshipping teenage Boomer fans. With the release of “The Beatles: Rockband” on Monday, Harmonix Music Systems is hoping that The Beatles will bring that same generation, now 45-64 years old, to video gaming and multi-media music consumption — just as they brought that generation to rock and roll, stadium concerts and music videos.

Video gaming has long been entertainment medium of choice of teenage boys. The introduction of role-playing games such as Sims and Harvest Moon helped convert teenage girls but it wasn’t until the advent of new, easier-to-manipulate platforms — such as the Wii — and social play through Rockband and Wii Sports, that video games began attracting a wider following. It is now a formidable entertainment medium in its own right and generated more than $21 billion in sales in 2008. Throughout this growth, though, Boomers, were largely absent — even as they began embracing other non-traditional media forms such as social networks. Research indicates anywhere from 12%-19% of Boomers have played a video game at least once but monthly video game usage tracked by Nielsen suggests that trial is not enough: Boomers’ represent less than 10% of monthly video game activity.

But, Harmonix believes the release of “The Beatles: Rockband” could change that. “From the beginning, Rockband has attracted a wider demographic audience than we ever anticipated,” Harmonix Creative Director Josh Randall shared with me via phone last week. “We discovered it wasn’t just teens — but also parents and younger children. And, we wanted ‘The Beatles: Rockband’ to invite people into the game that had never played before.”

Design changes Randall oversaw included simplified navigation, an easier “beginner” setting, and inclusion of a three-part vocal harmony feature, which lets non-musically inclined players participate in the game as well. Another important change that Harmonix implemented was a “no fail” option.

In most games, once a player fails to complete a task, the game ends and the player has to start from the beginning and overcome those challenges to complete the game. In a musical game, “failing” ends a song performance. “People, particularly older people, have to cross multiple barriers to play a video game,” stated Randall matter-of-factly, “so, you don’t want people who just crossed these barriers to play, get ‘boo-ed off the stage’ immediately because they’re just learning.” The “no fail” option allows players to continue enjoying Beatles songs, even if their instrumental playing fails.

This strategy — of modifying design to appeal to a broader audience — is reminiscent of Facebook’s evolving changes that ultimately helped it become the social networking site for Boomers. While Facebook did not intentionally make changes to attract Boomers, this generational group is now the fastest-growing segment on the site. Boomers join Facebook to connect with their families, according Anderson Analytics. This growth from Boomers has helped Facebook reach 250 million users and created a rare opportunity to generate revenue from an audience base that dwarfs any traditional or digital channel.

If “The Beatles: Rockband” succeeds at drawing Boomers to their video gaming, it offers Harmonix and MTV networks an opportunity to grow their market share as well as revenues from gaming software, accessories and future musical downloads. While “The Beatles: Rockband” launches with 45 digitally re-mastered Beatles songs covering the span of their career, Harmonix and MTV plan to offer other Beatles songs for additional downloading. And, unlike teens, Boomers are willing to pay for their music. This is, after all, the generation that launched MTV — a channel on a subscriber-based platform.

WTF?! Is that really your social brand?

Photo credits (left to right): Photobucket.com, Funlok.com

In the early days of my marketing career, I spent a fair amount of time both in front of, and behind, focus group room mirrors, leading or observing consumers play a brand personification game.  The game is simple: the moderator provides the name of a brand.  The consumers create a profile — using words, photos or other prompts to represent the brand as a person — complete with gender, voice, clothing, accessories, hair style, profession, relationships, and cars.   So, for instance, a Citibank cardmember might be a married, mid-level male manager wearing a department store suit, a Timex watch, driving a Ford Taurus, and living in the suburbs.  A Discover cardmember, on the other hand, might be a white construction worker, driving a 1970’s Oldsmobile with crackled leatherette seating.

We used these exercises to help uncover consumer insights about brands — both in terms of what the brand currently stood for and where we could take the brand — as well as the brand’s voice and personality which we then translated into marketing, product development, PR and advertising strategies.

While these exercises gave us an understanding of consumers’ perceptions of a wide range of brands, it also provided snapshots of the effectiveness of brand campaigns across consumer touchpoints.  The more consistent, the greater the consumer internalization of the campaign. For instance, throwing a pack of Marlboros on the table would immediately elicit the Marlboro man; a pack of Camels, Joe Camel. Some brands — insurance companies, manufacturers, airlines, pharmaceuticals, for example — were difficult for consumers to humanize; the brands were either too institutional or too diffuse, making it difficult for them to construct a “real” persona.

I’ve been thinking about those personification exercises lately as I skim updates of brands I have friended, fanned or followed.  Many of these brands’ social network presences are devoid of personality; their persona existing only as a broadcast channel spewing an endless ticker tape feed of news and sales promotions.  Others have developed a social persona painfully out of sync with their brand.  A brand that was most likely developed through diligent research, creative brainstorming and careful nurturing.  A brand that is supported by expensive broadcast advertising, strategic partnerships and product placements.  A brand created by branding and marketing professionals for both consumer acceptance and enduring competitive advantage.  A brand consumers can easily call up in a brand personification exercise, complete with voice, accent and lifestyle.

These out of sync brand personas do more damage to a brand than abstaining entirely from social network participation.  Don’t get me wrong: I do believe brands should participate in social networks; they are incredible branding opportunities.  However, the brand on a social network needs to be as meticulously managed as it is in any other manifestation.  You shouldn’t just “jump in”  – despite what many social media experts advise – without a strategy and voice alignment with the overarching brand.

Otherwise, you risk confusing consumers with what your brand stands for. Or worse, denigrating your brand.  And, if you are a premium brand, you can’t sustain your premium stature with a social brand that is unpolished, sterile or just generally out of sync.  That’s what many brands did in the early days of the Internet.  Then, like now, companies entered a new medium awkwardly: they knew they should have a presence, but didn’t believe it would really help their business.  So, they put the most junior person or persons on it; they gave them limited resources and they allowed technicians without a brand background to develop and execute the strategy.  The result? Sites that were ugly, dull, and undeserving of representing the brand.

So, is your brand Don Draper in all of its manifestations? Or is a there a “computer slob” counterpart representing Don on your social networks?

Social Media: It’s more than an ATM

Pete Cashmore, Founder, Mashable, Photo credit: RealPortraitImages.com

That’s what almost 400 attendees learned at social media blog Mashable’s first Social Good Conference at the 92^nd Street Y in Manhattan last Friday.  The conference closed out Mashable’s Summer of Social Good initiative to raise $35,000 via social media for the Humane Society of the United States, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Oxfam, and LIVESTRONG.

Instead, presenters from these four organizations, along with Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg, non-profit blogger and social media coach, Beth Kanter, MediaSauce Cause Marketing Director Scott Henderson, Case Foundation Kari Saratovsky and many others stressed using social media to build social connections that ultimately lead to social activism.  Beth Kanter, in her dynamic presentation, summarized this notion as social media’s three Rs:

• Relationships:  Use social media to build relationships with supporters as well as other organizations who are passionate about the same cause.
• Rewards:  Make your supporters feel special; thank them for their support, invite them to events, share your success stories with them.
• Reciprocity:  Help others do well.  If someone helps, return the favor and help them.

Non-profits who follow the three Rs are more likely to gain evangelists, supporters willing to undertake actions on behalf of the cause versus just slacktivists, people who “fan” but don’t actively support the cause.  For example:

• Oxfam – uses social media to instantly mobilize supporters, recruit volunteers and engage in peer-to-peer conversations. A single event pushed out on their social networks recruited over 650 volunteers.
• WWF — recruited 17,000 subscribers via social media to post comments and content to the WWF Facebook Fan page;  raised over $70,000 via 19,000 eBay auctions
• Share Our Strength/Tyson/End Hunger – increased awareness for cause, recruited 784 volunteers, 1000 donors and raised $28,000 all from a one week push via social media

With tangible results like this, it’s no wonder 89 percent of non-profits are currently engaged in social media — a much higher percentage than Fortune 500 companies according to research that Case Foundation’s Kari Saratovsky cited at the conference.

For those organizations just starting out, Facebook’s  Randi Zuckerberg offered these practical tips for leveraging one of the world’s largest social networks:

• Use Fan Pages, not Groups to leverage Facebook’s viral capabilities.  Pages operate like profiles for organizations or businesses.  Posts made to Fan Pages are included in Fan’s newsfeeds.  Pages can only be created by official representatives and can add applications, while groups are unofficial and can be created by any user.
• Have a personality on your Fan Page:  Personality is an asset, according to Zuckerberg.  Don’t be too “formal” — you’re trying to create a connection and that requires personality.  Include fun updates and other content that foster conversations and engagement.
• Incorporate videos. Groups that post video on their fan pages are typically able to generate greater engagement and message posting.  Those posted messages then are shared with others adding to the viral effect.
• Tag liberally.  Take pictures at events and post them to your Facebook pages. When you post the images, tag as many people as you can in the photos and/or invite your fans to tag themselves.  Tagging  notifies not only those who have been tagged but also their friends — which can draw even more traffic to your fan page.
• Incorporate Facebook into your events. If you have a special event, make sure you invite your Facebook fans to the party, too. You’ll probably attract more people — and Facebook will tell all of their friends that they are coming to an organization’s event.

And, if these case studies and tips don’t convince you that social media is meaningful for your organization or company, consider Forrester’s latest research that found 80 percent of all adults log in to a social network site every month.

Your Personal Brand: How the Internet Sees You

Last week, Nicholas Patten turned me on to Personas, a component of MIT’s Social Media Group’s Metropath(ologies) exhibit which enables users to visual their online identities.   According to the site, Personas “uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data picture of one’s aggregated online identity.”

It’s a brilliant way to look at how the internet — or anyone who is going to google you — sees you.  The site is simple — you enter in your name and Personas scours the web for every instance of your name and attempts to characterize you.

Try it.  And enter your name a few different ways; it seems to be both case and nomenclature sensitive — as you can see from my examples below:

When I used my full name with capitals

When I used my full name, no capitals

When I used just my first and last name

When I only used annemai, my frequent online name

But is this really me?

Many people commented on Nick’s post that Personas was fun but flawed: it didn’t represent their “real” identity — or that it captured other individuals who happened to share similar names — definitely a downside to having a common name — and lumped them together.

I, too, initially had that same reaction.  But, the reality is, this is how the internet sees us — and how it projects us to would be employers, clients, headhunters, friends, etc.  It grabs snippets of us; it confuses us with people of similar names; it doesn’t capture our entire life; in short, it’s imperfect.

This is the battle that brand marketers fight all the time.  How does the world perceive them — and is this the way they want to be perceived?  And, like brand marketers, if you don’t like how the internet represents you, you can change it by creating your own digital content to change the perception. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

• Get Your Name There are plenty services that make it easy to “own” your name digitally.  I use Network Solutions but there are other options like GoDaddy and even WordPress.  I have purchased my name in both long and short forms.  If you have a common name, consider how you might “own” the name.  For instance, Anne Bertelsen is a fairly common Scandinavian name.  Anne Mai Bertelsen or just AnneMai, on the other hand, is less common.  I own the domains to all three.
• Start a blog.  Using your name, create a blog.  While this blog happens to be written — and hosted — on WordPress, I have a personal blog on Posterous which is dead simple to use.  No CSS or html to learn.  Just email your content or post via web, mobile or bookmarking.
• Contribute:  Depending on what you want your brand to stand for, find places to add your thoughts, insights, comments on their blogs.  Write comments on other people’s blogs.
• Be Visible:  Join and participate in social networks (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In) and interest-relevant associations.  When you join those networks and associations, use a single, consistent, unique name — if you can — to separate yourself from others.  As I noted above, I tend to use my full name (first, middle, last) or my first and middle name vs. just my first and last name, which is more common.  In case you didn’t know, Facebook allows you to “own” your name for your Facebook vanity URL.
• Be consistent: As you join these networks, use the same name and photo.  It will help in aggregating search results about you as well as helping others get to know you online.
• Protect and Defend Your Reputation:  Finally, if you did something stupid online or just want a better way of tracking your online reputation, check out ReputationDefender.com.  It will search out and destroy damaging and/or inaccurate information about you online.

Hope these suggestions serve as an inspiration to manage and define your personal brand.  What suggestions or tips do you have?

Marketers Embrace Twitter Over Facebook — Too Bad Consumers Don’t

via emarketer.com

According to Burson-Marsteller, a little over half of Fortune 100 companies are on Twitter while only 29% of have a Facebook fan page. To me, it’s not a big surprise since Twitter has become such an easy way to “listen” to what people are saying about one’s brand.

via emarketer.com

But, interestingly, in a shift from earlier this year, marketers are including links to their Twitter accounts on email campaigns.  Unfortunately, the study doesn’t address why this shift is occurring.

via emarketer.com

Looking to Engage Customers? There’s an App for That

Or,  so it seemed at yesterday’s Digiday: Apps conference in New York. From cleaning oil slick animals to joining MLB fan community to connecting with favorite tv shows, marketers learned the ins and outs of creating mobile applications to meet their business needs.

In the after-conference cocktail hour conversations, though, it seemed that there were still skeptics: they believed smartphones users are a minority, that mobile apps are potentially just “fads” and most importantly, that they lacked tangible ROIs.

It’s unfortunate because smartphone usage is growing significantly and offers savvy marketers a platform to engage current and potential customers.

There are roughly 29 million smartphone owners in the U.S. and they are not a monolithic group as GravityTank, who presented at the end of the day, illuminated with their ethnographic and quantitative research on mobile app users.  Their results should ease marketers’ minds about mobile apps’ relevance, audience size and up-side opportunity.  Consider:

• Mobile app users are engaged with their downloaded apps: 40% of total daily phone interaction is spent on their mobile apps
• More than third (35%) feel that mobile apps have changed their lives
• More than half (53%) report that mobile apps have helped them, making their lives easier in some way
• They downloaded an average of 21 apps of which seven were used on a daily basis
• Of those seven used on a daily basis, five of them were paid for vs free.
• Significant majorities of respondents are interested or extremely interested in apps from brands — e.g., retailers, financial institutions, airlines, hotels
• Not surprisingly, given the time they spend on their apps, only 7% of them believe mobile apps are “fads”

In addition, GravityTank shared their segmentation of app-phone users who look and act differently:

• Recent converts: Recent converts are new smartphone users who experiment with apps. They think apps are fun and nice to have on a phone, but they don’t see apps as game-changers.
• Life Optimizers: Optimizers see their phones as digital extensions of their brains. They use them to manage their busy lives and to improve their ability to make the most out of the opportunities each day presents.
• Constantly Entertained: The constantly entertained use their phones primarily for social and media purposes. They are younger, predominately male, and seem to have a deep-rooted fear of boredom.

Of these three segments, the Life Optimizers and Constantly Entertained offer an existing sizable audience for marketers to engage — representing 73%-80% of Blackberry/Windows and iPhone/G1 users, respectively.  Demographically, they are a sweet-spot for most marketers.

While Kevin Nakano, of WhitePages, Inc. had not seen GravityTank’s research, his firm, nevertheless, understood the upside potential of launching a mobile app.  In the year since it’s launch first on iPhone and then Android and Blackberry, WhitePages, Inc. their free mobile app has generated 57cents per user in ad revenue with a ROI of 10 cents per user.  Revenues from their more recently launched premium paid mobile app will only add positively to the company’s financial statement.

Armed with these kind of insights, marketers should explore how mobile applications can support their business objectives. It’s not a fad and it’s not going away in the near future.  Rather, more and more consumers are going to transition to app accessible phones, relying on them to assist and entertain them on a daily basis.  Smart marketers will be right there with them.

Facebook Buys FriendFeed: Can Grandmas and Geeks Co-exist?

via blog.friendfeed.com

Today, Bret Taylor, a co-founder of FriendFeed announced that Facebook acquired his company on the FriendFeed Blog although he titled it cutely FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request

The Twitterati have made “Facebook Acquires” a trending topic.  Some love it; some hate it.  Personally, I’m wondering how or if Facebook — with its large, mainstream following (some have called it “Grandma’s social network”) is going to incorporate the realtime features of FriendFeed that the “geeks” so adore.  Robert Scoble wrote in his blog that Facebook gained, among other things, a real time search capability and R&D department through its acquisition.   To me, the acquisition feels eerily like AOL’s acquisition of Netscape back in 1998.  Then, like now, Netscape was the R&D and the “geeks” while AOL was large and mainstream.

 

 

What is Social Media

I think this is one of the best — and funniest — presentations on social media I have seen. Marta Kagan, the author, is a genius. And, I need to thank Bryan Fuhr, from AKQA, for turning me onto it.

While you may not want to use this with a client, there are certainly some wonderful insights and stats worth sharing.