Social Media Monitoring: A Risk Management Strategy

Below is an excerpt from a hilarious but very damaging letter sent to Richard Branson from a somewhat disgruntled Virgin Airlines passenger:

Dear Mr Branson,

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008,

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.
Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it: [see image 1, above].
I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

(To read the letter is it's full glory please click here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/4344890/Virgin-the-worlds-best-passenger-complaint-letter.html)

Unsurprisingly this letter has now gone viral and has been a visitor to many an inbox around the world.

Also unsurprisingly this has now turned into a PR disaster for Virgin Airlines.

To add insult to injury this letter follows on from the recent news story that Virgin America has sent a threatening letter to Adrants (blog) because of an ad (made by someone else) that they posted.

Although Adrants has pulled the ad, the VX lawsuit is still a real threat. The ad shows the US Airways plane floating in the Hudson and has a small "fly " at the bottom in an apparent parody.

Virgin isn't having a very good week.

Having seen these stories this week i couldn't help thinking that Social Media Monitoring may have helped dilute these situations, not stop them altogether, but it could have given Virgin a heads-up to get a response or intervention in place alot sooner.

Social media monitoring tools such as Buzz Numbers, Trucast/SEER & Nielsen Buzzmetrics are readily available in the marketplace and specialise in monitoring the social web.

They look at everything from the standard journo-driven news stories on SMH online to Facebook commentary, blogs, forums & standard websites.

The data can start off as an overview just rating positive or negative sentiment towards a brand and the general industry such as 'how are people feeling about their finances in the current economic environment and what really matters to them'.

But Advertisers also have the ability to drill down into minutely detailed data such as:

• Conversation topics



• Exact wording & phrases used



• Where are these conversations taking place



• Who is talking about them



• Segment enthusiasts into groups such as influencers, connectors, authoritarians & advocates



• Benchmarking against Competitors



• Volume & Velocity of a topic

The list goes on.....

This kind of data is not only good to have.....it's ESSENTIAL!

Clients are knocking down doors at the moment crying "we want to do a social media campaign!"

When asked why the answer i get time and time again is either "because it's the IN thing" or "because everyone else is doing it".

My response is usually to take them through my guide on 'How to fail at Social Media in 5 easy steps' which consists of the following:

1. Buy into the hype
2. Get an agency to throw together a quick activation strategy
3. Jump in
4. Try to control the conversation
5. Get burned

If this doesn't persuade them otherwise i bring out the big guns and show them the blog headlines & bad PR of our favourite social media try-hard NAB - that usually does the trick.

Having diffused a potentially difficult situation my recommendation is Social Media Monitoring.

"It's about conversations, and the best communicators start as they best listeners." (Brian Solis, Social Media Manifesto)

Before Advertisers go barging into the social webspace i think it's important to understand where they currently stand in the space and what people think about them already.

These conversations should then be filtering into & influencing every comms plan we put together because it's about time that we stopped broadcasting & started understanding what it is people want and what matters to them.

Once we have this data then we are better placed to plan & execute effective advertising.

So back to the beginning and Virgin Airlines.....

If Virgin had utilised social media monitoring then i theorise that they could have caught these issues earlier and responded in such a way as to this turn bad PR into a positive spin...

The Letter: Virgin could have traced back to the key influential parties that had first seeded the viral. Once they had found these people it may have been beneficial to approach them to offer them a free flight, ask them to help contribute to their inflight menu, invited them to meet Richard Branson....i don't know the list is endless and i don't work on Virgin so these ideas are hardly thought out.....but you get my point.

The Ad Parody: Had they listened to the conversation surrounding the Hudson River crash then they would have understood peoples nervous disposition towards flying and could have put an ad out early stressing the safety of the Virgin Aircrafts.....

Ultimately Social Media Monitoring will become a neccessity to any good advertiser....

Facebook lets advertisers poll it's users in the US

Finally!

Facebook have revealed this week that they are beta testing ads that allow marketers to poll Facebook members.

Advertisers clamoring for deeper engagement with Facebook's 150 million members will soon have the ability simply to ask them what they are thinking, and then display the results for all to see -- or even better, comment on.

I don't know about you but for the last year i have been using a whole jumble of technologies & systems to compile qualitative research about the impact of online advertising on purchase consideration, brand advocacy & general reaction, positive or negative, to campaign activity.

Tools such as Dynamic Logic, on-site surveys & brand tracker studies are all well and good but they are expensive and not always conclusive.

These new polling ad units open up a world of opportunity for marketers - we can finally get realtime feedback on our advertising from the people who really matter which can help us respond and open up the dialogue in a whole new way.

The first two advertisers to use the beta polling ads will be Careerbuilder and Papa John's in the US.

In the run-up to the Super Bowl, Careerbuilder will ask Facebook members which team they think will win the game, the Pittsburgh Steeler or the Arizona Cardinals. When users make their pick, they are shown the results so far, as well as how their friends voted. They will also have the option to be taken to the Careerbuilder fan page.

After the Super Bowl, the career-services site will run one or more of the commercials it ran during the game, with new questions relating to the spots. It will also be offering a "virtual gift" featuring an item from the commercials.

The ads will appear either on the right-hand side of the screen or in the News Feed, where it will be shaded and marked as a sponsored item. The beta period for the ads is expected to run through the spring and early summer, said a spokeswoman for Facebook.

Facebook launched Phase 1 of the series of Engagement Ad units in August 08 with advertisers like Adidas, Betty Crocker and Dreamworks. The first ads allowed Facebook members to become "fans" of advertisers or view trailers and leave comments without leaving the page.

Go Facebook!

Dear God.....Why?

You spend months and months selling in Mobile to your client, they finally sign it off and it's going to be the start of their foray into the new media world - how exciting!

The campaign is to be fully integrated and the SMS response will be featured in the print and OOH executions, nothing revolutionary but it's still a big deal....

This is campaign is going to have great response rates and the client is going to be delighted.

So imagine my pain when i saw the final approved creative and the SMS call to action is featured in the small print below the T's & C's which are pretty much illegible.

Come on creative agency.....give me a break!

Great mobile presentation

Here is a great presentation about the evolution of the mobile channel and the implications for marketers in 2009.

http://www.slideshare.net/akispicer/fallon-brainfood-the-mobile-10-presentation?src=embed

Check it out!

Performance, Performance, Performance....

I wish people would stop talking about "Performance media" as if it was a reality...

Yes we all had the wool pulled over our eyes about 5 years ago with the launch of these "pay on results" networks but honestly, if you're still selling it into your clients or even talking about in a positive light then you're either delusional, crap at your job or you know exactly what you're doing but you haven't got the b******ks to fess up to your clients because you've been having such as easy ride so far....

99.9% of the "conversions" you recieve from this activity are post impression which basically means that someone, somewhere was exposed to your advertisement at least once in the last 30 days online prior to the acquisition.

Well obviously!

If you use MSDR (NineMSN performance network) or DrivePM or Fairfax's FDO then you are pretty much covering 100% of the online audience so the liklihood that someone, somewhere has seen your ad in the last 30 days is guaranteed.

Now that person could have converted because they saw your TV ad or they could have typed in "credit card" into Google and clicked on your ad there, or they could have clicked on a comparison table on a finance site and converted from there....

The point is that it doesn't matter where they saw the ad or what the road of coversion was you are still going pay these performance networks a defined CPA because at some point prior to conversion they served an ad to that person.

I know that ad exposure matters, i know that it aids brand recall, purchase consideration and could have actually been the sole reason that person bought your product but paying out EVERYTIME someone converts who was exposed to an ad on these performance networks it ridiculous...! You are paying twice, three times, four times for the same conversion!

You pay Google for the click through PLUS the ad network for the exposure (CPA)
You pay the comparison site for the lead PLUS the ad network for the exposure (CPA)
You pay NineMSN for the ad placement on the Money section PLUS the ad network for the exposure (CPA)

It's a big waste of money......unless you change your perception about 'peformance media"....

Let's talk reach & frequency. The age-old success metric of advertising.
Guess what - it still works.

So now how do we allocate this to "performance media"?
The performance network needs to record a conversion (post click or post impression) in order to get paid (CPA).
So they do what they do best, they serve a huge volume of impressions and hit as many people as possible, because after all, if they do that then they are bound to get someone that will eventually convert.

But the benefit of this for us (the advertiser) is that we get high reach & frequency of our message to the online population.
Now if you work that backwards you should be looking at the cost you are shelling out (CPA or CPC) and the impressions you are recieving - from this you can work out your 'effective CPM'.

What you will find is that more often than not you will recieve a lower eCPM by using a CPA/CPC metric on performance networks than if you pay the standard CPM for run of network activity and you can even optimise down depending on the results you get.
You can lower you CPA or CPC bid and in turn lower your eCPM without losing the volume of inventory.

Yes - it's simple and it works!

So stop hiding behind this myth of "Peformance Networks", stand up and admit that its fake - try out the eCPM strategy and start running effective and efficient advertising!

Probably one of the best social media presentations i've seen to date.....

http://www.slideshare.net/mzkagan/what-the-fk-social-media

Incapable or misunderstood?

Digitial agencies are incapable of planning and executing social media activity for their clients.....


If you agree with this statement then you are of the same opinion as a speaker i saw today at a workshop on Advertising & Marketing through Social Media.

It's an interesting, if somewhat controversial, viewpoint which has drawn me into my own debate - do i agree or disagree?

Working for a digital agency i obviously come from a heavily biased origin.
Clients contact me on a daily basis about new online opportunities they have seen, new buzz words, the next big thing which they have to be a part of, and this is on top of my own thinking and ideas.

My role as the agency contact is to filter all of these options and to decide what the best platforms are for my clients to work with.
As part of the planning process i need to rationalise everything i do; advising, recommending and dissuading them to push them in the right direction to meet their marketing objectives.

There is a large amount of trust they place in my ability to do this intelligently and effectively....

Recent social media executions driven by agencies have fallen short of the 'intelligent & effective' mark

• NAB's blog spamming - Cox & Inall
• Fantastic Noodles attempt at its own social network - Clemenger BBDO

Both of these campaigns demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the social media landscape and both have gained notoriety about how not to execute a social media strategy.

But does that mean that all agencies should be tarred with the same brush?

The speaker i saw today justified his opinion with supporting statements about how agencies work:

• Agencies think in a 'campaign by campaign' mentality but social media is a long term strategy
• Agencies are adept at starting a conversation (i.e. broadcast media) but do not think to engage further to maintain an ongoing dialogue
• Agencies will stop social media once budgets are spent - therefore there is no continuity and conversations are ad hoc which isn't in line with building consumer advocacy

Whilst these comments are factually correct i want to give a bit of background insight as to why we operate this way....

Agencies think on a campaign by campaign basis:

Our clients give us budgets to promote certain products/services. These products & services are promoted within campaign periods which are outlined by the client according to their demand generation objectives.

These products may be tied to seasonal pushes (retail or travel), market influences (financial services) or general demand (technology & entertainment).

Agencies are adept at starting conversations but do not engage further to maintain dialogue / no continuity once budgets run out:

This follows on from the campaign periods. We are allocated 'campaign' budgets, once these are spent we are unable to continue or maintain dialogue past the initial start of the conversation.

So whilst i can agree from a factual point of view that these statements about agency working practices are correct i have to disagree that the onus should be solely with the agency to make the step change from 'campaign by campaign' to 'long term strategy'

Agencies can try to educate clients to move away from ad-hoc advertising, they can better advise them in regards to social media activity (unlike Cox & Inall) and they can dissuade them from ineffective executions.....but my view is that agencies are only one part of the equation.

Clients are not exempt from the firing line within this debate.

They ultimately drive the processes that agencies work by, they push the ad-hoc 'campaign' thinking and they control the budgets.

To quote Avenue A/Razorfish from the Digital Outlook Report 2008:

'client organisations - including the functions of marketing, sales, brand advertising, promotion, direct marketing, IT and general management - have all settled into a comfortable structure. These functions were built to support a stable world of marketing that remained virtually unchanged for 50 years...but consumers no longer move neatly from one touchpoint to another.....the internet has shattered the entire concept of the linear purchase funnel'

'How can companies organised along such traditional lines succeed in this environment? They can't. Even if they find an agency who has made the transition, to whom does the agency pitch their ideas? The IT department? The direct marketing specialists? The marketing director?'

'what has to change so that clients can quickly respond to, and act on, game changing digital ideas?'

So you see - until the 'client of the future' emerges these social media barriers will remain in place regardless of agency input.

And there you have it, i have jumped off the fence firmly in favour of the agencies this time around - now i can only hope we don't have any repeats of NAB & Fantastic Noodles....