Friday 28 October 2011

SOCIAL MEDIA CASE STUDIES [GB_V57.0]

The U.S. Labor Department is teaming up with Facebook to form a Social Jobs Partnership that will help connect the jobless with companies that are hiring - LA Times

Dunkin' Donuts is inviting their Twitter followers to share photos of their best jack-o-lantern creations with hashtag #carveDD for a chance to win a $50 gift card - The Sacramento Bee

The Evolution of 'Participatory' Marketing - As tactics rise and fall, a more sophisticated approach is emerging - Article

Toyota's new Facebook game lets users test drive their new vehicle, create and host their own races, and compete in community-wide competitions with other fans - All Facebook

Razorfish Report on Connecting with the Digital Mom - Report

Lenovo's Space Lab initiative is challenging teens to design a science experiment that can be performed in space. The videos can be submitted to their YouTube channel and the winning experiments will be streamed live as they are conducted in space - ClickZ


To promote the upcoming release of their action-comedy "Tower Heist," Universal Pictures is giving away up to one million Facebook credits by hiding them all around the social network on various characters' pages for fans to find and collect - Ad Age

Volkswagen (by Red Urban) adds some serendipity to a static print campaign for the new Beetle using Augmented Reality (#AR) – Overview

Beeri - This tech mashup uses Siri's voice recognition, Twitter, an Arduino Uno w/wifi and a Twitter API querie to 'pour' beers (albeit crudely) for employees.  Check out the video below.

Beeri from redpepper on Vimeo.

The Weather Channel is developing new ways to reach their local audiences using Twitter, Facebook, video, and a new, interactive iPad application - Lost Remote

Have you ever wondered what online channels you should be targeting in order to reach the perfect audience for your product? Check out “Social Consumers and the Science of Sharing” – Infographic

The CONCEPT: Building brands as Social Movements. The BOOK? Leo Burnett’s “HUMANKIND” - advocates focusing, not only on advertising, but on people. Moreover, letting human activities and beliefs actually drive brand strategy – More

Burberry kept fans up-to-date during London Fashion Week by hosting a "Tweetwalk" on Twitter, streaming video and interviews on Facebook, and actively posting on Instagram - The Social CMO Blog

Nestea has a new Facebook application that lets fans create videos to inspire friends to embrace something they haven't done before - PSFK

Just in time for Halloween, Sony is featuring a collection of horror films that encourages fans to watch, rate, discuss, and keep count of their favorite horror moments on the Crackle entertainment network - Dread Central
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NOTE:  For more articles and posts from the last week please visit us on Twitter @goodbuzz.  If you have info, articles, case studies, or other examples of (TTL) participatory marketing bliss - please feel free to either post via Facebook or send via e-mail and we’ll take care of it for you. ;)  Please identify if you find a dead link (as they were all live at the time of this posting).





Monday 24 October 2011

WHAT IS 'PARTICIPATORY' MARKETING?


To be clear, we’ve heard ‘it’ called 360˚, integrated, through-the-line (TTL) marketing and numerous other terms.  Whatever you call ‘it’ - it builds and adopts cross-channel tactics based upon user behavior, context and reaction to past content and consistently delivers the most compelling message (and experience) to each customer at the perfect moment through the perfect channel – across inbound and outbound, online and offline, or traditional or emerging.

As tactics rise and fall, a more sophisticated approach is emerging.  Instead of thinking tactic by tactic, marketers are beginning to think strategically across three major areas of social content:  owned (what they create), earned (what customers create), and paid (what marketers spend money for.) 

OWNED
Media, content, and channels that the company directly delivers, has control over, or owns.  For example:
  • Traditional – Direct Mail (DM), call center, branch/store, ATM, Kiosk/POS
  • Digital – Email, website, microsites, blog, Facebook.


EARNED
Media, content, and channels delivered through a 3rd Party without exchange of payment.  While your control factor is low, credibility is high.  Examples include:
  • Traditional – Public Relations, generated new, analyst coverage.
  • Digital – Twitter, Blogs, Product Reviews


PAID
The most familiar terrain for most marketers; this is media, content, and channels that are delivered through a 3rd party or intermediary in exchange for payment.  For example:
  • Traditional – TV, Radio, Print, Out-of-home (OOH)
  • Digital – Display ads, PPC, Sponsored Content.


What emerges is a non-linear, integrated, interactive, and immersive (platform-agnostic) approach to marketing that is driven by real-time data and intelligence. 

ACTION
Our chief task as Marketers, both internally and externally, is therefore to get people to engage with and be active participants (i.e. play, create, and share) in our brand story.  Interacting effectively with customers in the digital era has implications beyond marketing products and services. Customers can now find out where and how a company makes its products; how it treats its employees, retired workers and suppliers; how much it pays its top executives; how seriously it takes its environmental responsibilities and the like. This knowledge can affect their buying decisions. Each company has a corporate ‘character’ or ‘personae’ – the differentiating attributes that make it a distinct enterprise. In other words, what an organization stands for is as important as what it sells.

Savvy marketers therefore need to focus on relationships, not just transactions. They need to become change “agents”, drive innovation, push their companies to reboot, and teach our peers how to listen and how to talk to customers.

SERVICES

To help CMO’s facilitate this task, Goodbuzz Inc. has partnered with (Toronto-based) Brand Strategy think-tank LEVEL 5 to capitalize on their world-class proprietary Brand DNA Mapping.  We have additionally partnered with (New York City-based) Buyology Inc. to utilize their MindLink™ measurement and analytics platform for understanding brand relationships. From this mapping, Goodbuzz articulates a comprehensive social brand ‘character’ or ‘personae’ that acts as a template for all partners when engaging along participatory channels.  

To further investigate this mapping and articulation process, please contact us directly.