As part of our planning offering to clients, we run digital focus groups with different audience segments to roadtest creatives and concepts prior to development. This is a low cost and effective way of ensuring decisions are made by a diverse and relevant team of people (see my associated rant on Twitter this morning for more info).
Our latest group is for a film concept we are creating in the healthcare field and we added an extra question in. What attributes make a Mum want to share a video on Facebook with other parents?
There is a famous quote from Maya Angelou,
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
It seems this rings as true in today’s digital world as ever. Humour was stated as important, as was the message of the video but people also want to be made to think. They want to be made to feel.
The mighty blue whale of social announced the provision of greater analytics for social ad campaigns this week. The changes are to the analytics that marketers can see when measuring campaigns. Previously, insights showed who had clicked on an ad / liked a page etc. New functionality will show expanded metrics that help comms professionals track how the campaign performed against wider marketing initiatives e.g. Clicked ad, liked page, completed survey, bought product, shared on wall.
This is good news for PR and social media professionals using Facebook advertising to support their campaigns as previously the insights fell short of what clients were used to in terms of delivering a result against a specific call to action. It also lets us see what has been achieved as a result of a paid campaign versus what was happening anyway as a result of ongoing Facebook activity.
From Inside Facebook:
Previously, it had been difficult for marketers to understand what sort of effect their ads had beyond building a fan base since Facebook did not provide information about what users did after they clicked on an ad. This change seems to be part of a continued push to de-emphasize Likes as a campaign goal, and instead encourage marketers to focus on engagement within the platform. Today’s announcement does not affect Facebook’s pricing model. Ads are still sold on a cost-per-click or cost-per-impression basis….
Under the old system advertisers could only get data about the number of people who liked the page as a result of the ad. They could visit a separate page insights dashboard to see the total likes, comments and shares for a post, but there was no way to distinguish which actions came organically versus through paid media.
This is a guest post by Lauren who has been working with us for the past two weeks.
It was the middle of the day, I was somewhere between wandering why Tarzan never had a beard and whether the Doc Martens I like are really worth the £100 price tag when boom! Natalie asks me if I want to write a blog on my time here.
The name’s Lauren. I’m 15. I go to Waldegrave School and if you hadn’t already guessed, this is about my work experience. Ruder Finn is one of the top PR firms in the city and I was lucky enough to get the chance to do my work experience here so during my 2 weeks work experience one of the things I wanted to discover was what makes a great firm tick, what their inspiration is, what it is that keeps them motivated. The answer is quite simply (and not surprisingly) - biscuits.
I think I may have found the new world record holders for ‘Most amount of biscuits eaten in a short space of time by a group of people who have mostly given up biscuits for Lent but can’t resist a good old Jammy Dodger’ Let me start back on my first day. I met Natalie and was soon introduced to everyone - although I thought I’ll be lucky if I even remember 2 names… But for the first day I was pretty much glued to my desk. Literally. I mean it was like I was afraid if I stood up I would feel the eyes of the office just watching me.
I went to lunch as soon as I could, looked around Topshop and sat in Pret where I came across a very over enthusiastic man working at the till and an elderly lady who chose to sit uncomfortably close on the table next to me. Anyway, in case you couldn’t already tell, I was nervous. Really nervous. On the first day of school, you have your friends to mess around with, have a laugh, take your mind off of things, you know? But when you don’t know anyone and you’re in a totally new place you reckon you’ll be lucky if you even make it up until lunchtime…
I’ll be honest, when I arrived I was pretty impressed with the new Ruder Finn office, I was thinking ‘Is this what works really like? Have they been conning us kids for years? I mean there’s a PS3 and iPad in the corner with flat screen – where’s the work in that?’ This was all back in February when I came for an interview with Emma, after this I was looking forward (if not still really nervous) to my first day. Originally I hardly spoke to anyone; I sat at my computer feeling –for once in my life- unbelievably shy. By Thursday I was more in my comfort zone and even had a chat with people (which at the time seemed like a big step). And by Friday I was thinking about how glad I was that I had another week here, I mean I’d only just got to know everyone and only just settled in.
So here I am, second week in. Scanning newspapers like there’s no tomorrow. Answering the phone (which I was very proud of). And sitting in meetings. I think this experience has given better idea about my future. I vowed I would never want to be cooped up in an office everyday when I’m older but being here has shown me it’s not where you are it’s what you do and who you do it with. I know now how hard I need to push myself to get into what I really want to do; it won’t just get handed to me on a plate. There’s so many people that I got to know and made my time here really fab so thanks Natalie, Charlotte, Emma (for giving me the opportunity), Lou, Peter (for all the tea), Will, Matt and Mark but really I’d like to say thanks to everyone. It’s been great! As someone here said to me reflecting back on their work experience at ‘Comet’: ‘No…I really didn’t enjoy it; I couldn’t see myself in the future…selling Hoovers… So if you want to do something you have to work really hard and carry on working hard even if people slack you have to work really hard’- thanks for that Mark (although I still strongly believe politics is not my area of expertise…).
Thanks to visual.ly, you can now simply, quickly (and without cost) create an infographic (I know, I know…overkill) from any hashtag you are using in a PR or social media campaign.
Six basic steps:
1. Open www.visual.ly
2. Select “create”
3. Select “Life of a hashtag”
4. Insert said #hashtag (N.B the tool only uses data a month from current date)
Just a basic demo as it is a bit patchy on some details but with a high traffic hashtag, it could make a change from just listing out the results in the client wrap up report.
What: This case study looks at the World’s shortest ad.
Who: At 1 second long it was created on behalf of the OCD Foundation by McCann Erickson Israel.
Why we like it: It is simple but it takes communications into real world experience and does it online to open up access and reduce cost. You get the message immediately about the repeated actions that OCD sufferers go through every day.
Monocle magazine recently enjoyed their fifth anniversary of publication and as part of the celebration they put together a video which takes you through the history of the business from foundation to the present day.
When talking about their subscriber events they said:
Good conversation and a glass of white wine - that’s our type of social networking
We say: Facebook is all very well, but don’t forget the value of building real-world relationships and interactions.
Over the past few months I have hit a bit of a bloggers wall.
Lots of half drafted posts….ill-conceived ideas….half baked reviews and I have generally found the whole thing a bit of a struggle. Yesterday was my birthday (37, I don’t look it? thanks.) and for once I had a day off work. Well, that’s not true, I have two days off work each week but I always have my kids with me so yesterday was different. I had half a day to myself, no friends around, no distractions, no kids home and husband went for a “birthday surf” (yes, I know).
Whilst lying in the spa, being pampered within an inch of my life, I had time to actually think and reflect on things. Although I tried to keep my mind clear and relax (not a natural talent) I was processing all the pitches we’ve done recently, the conversations Ged and I have had, the new clients, the events within the agency, the new people I have met. It was refreshing. Really refreshing to have some time where I wasn’t working, being needed or being social. No phone. No conversations.
It was a bit of a revelation (although I’ve been advising people to do this for years).
I am really bad at allowing myself time to process things. Time without the pulls and pushes of life getting in the way. So I have made a resolution that every month I will find a day. Or maybe two half day to process thoughts, catch myself up and get things down on paper. I haven’t told my boss or my husband this yet so shh.
Anyway, I came up with about 6 blog post ideas yesterday that I actually managed to think through.
Zegna haven’t gone down the same road of online promotion that brands like Burberry have with massive efforts on their Facebook page, instead they have taken a much more pragmatic approach to building their client relationships. In this podcast with Monocle’s Tyler Brûlé, Gildo Zegna talks about reducing the amount of above the line spend that they do and increasing the number of in-store events. The rationale this approach was interesting: as well as the usual consumer insights, Zegna shared this bit of consumer psychology:
Go and meet the customer, talk to them, even if he doesn’t buy anything he will come back next season. Because next season he will be poor not to buy, or not to enjoy.
Zegna uses in-store collated email lists to drive this very analogue networking process as part of the dialogue with the customer. Not everyone needs to do everything on Facebook; particularly if you want long-lasting, high-touch, narrowcast relationships. In Facebook parlance, its not about likes or the followers; but gaining TRUE friends for the brand.
