Social proof is the new marketing

We’re in an amazing period of the consumer Internet.  Despite a shaky economy, many web companies are in hypergrowth.  This is reminiscent of the five-year period over a decade ago when companies like Amazon, Netscape, eBay, Yahoo, Google and PayPal were built.

One challenge, which isn’t new, is the battle for consumer attention.  If you’re looking to grow your user base, is there a best way to cost-effectively attract valuable users?  I’m increasingly convinced the best way is by harnessing a concept called social proof, a relatively untapped gold mine in the age of the social web.
What is social proof?  Put simply, it’s the positive influence created when someone finds out that others are doing something.  It’s also known as informational social influence.

Wikipedia describes social proof as “a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect the correct behavior for a given situation… driven by the assumption that the surrounding people possess more information about the situation.” In other words, people are wired to learn from the actions of others, and this can be a huge driver of consumer behavior.

Consider the social proof of a line of people standing behind a velvet rope, waiting to get into a club.  The line makes most people walking by want to find out what’s worth the wait.  The digital equivalent of the velvet rope helped build viral growth for initially invite-only launches like Gmail, Gilt Groupe, Spotify, and Turntable.fm.

Professor Robert Cialdini, a thought leader in social psychology, has many examples. In one study, his team tested messages to influence reusing towels in hotel rooms.  The social proof message – “Almost 75% of other guests help by using their towels more than once” had 25% better results than all other messages.  And adding the words “of other guests that stayed in this room” had even more impact (also an example of how A/B testing of small details matters).

In another study,

Sports partnership with sportingcommuniti.es

creativeb has teamed up with sportingcommuniti.es in creating one of the leading sports blog and sports social networks.

creativeb is targeting sports businesses and organisations in terms of helping them maximise their branding activities - sportingcommuniti.es provides one channel for the communication of client news and PR.

Established in 2008 sportingcommuniti.es in the last 3 months has published over 4500 posts and has a readership profile in the thousands through its blog website, email updates and other social media.  With quality blog posts and an exiciting editorial plan for 2012 we are looking forward in sharing the word about our partnership!

If you are a business that is involved in sport and would like to discuss how we could work together please contact us today.

Have a read about coachesacrosscontinents who are one of our sporting / not for profit clients.

How to Get Your Hotel’s Social Media ROI

As a hospitality  marketing  manager with lots of creative ideas and innovative projects planned using Social Media, but needing increased budget to support your work you need to quantify the value of your activities. 

The benefits tend to fall into two categories:

1) Cost savings

Customer service. Faster response times and faster issue resolution increases customer satisfaction and saves your company money. Data has shown that it’s seven times cheaper to serve a customer on Twitter than in a call center.

Feedback collection. Money spent gather customer feedback can be reduced when you go online. In the past, hotels had to collect insight through expensive mystery shopping and satisfaction surveys, but now travelers are sharing this information without being asked. Social media acts as a virtual “24/7 mystery shopper” that allows you to view your hotels through the eyes of guests. Analysis of online reviews can provide a much more comprehensive view of what your clients are experiencing.

Nokia to “rejuvenate” brand to focus on youth

Nokia is changing its strategy to focus on youth consumers as it sets about “rejuvenating” the brand and its tone of voice in a bid to stay competitive in the smartphone market.

The Finnish manufacturer is to ramp up its use of social media, partner with more youth-focused celebrities and brands – especially those with a music focus – and continue to ensure its phones are affordable as it looks to capture the youth market.
John Nichols, Nokia’s head of marketing for the UK and Ireland, says the shift in strategy will help it tap into the “next generation of mobile purchasers”.
He adds: “This isn’t a standing start, we already have a huge youth market but for teenagers we need to ensure that we create the content and partnerships that matter. As a teenager, the brands I loved had an opinion and told me whether to engage with them or not.
“The trick is to remember to not just wade in; otherwise our personality could look like the drunken uncle dancing at the wedding.”

‘Bold marketers will come out top after economy improves’

Companies that continue to invest in marketing despite uncertainty over the state of the economy will benefit from improved market share in the long-term, according to the authors of the latest IPA Bellwether report.

The advice comes as the report showed marketing budgets were set higher in the third quarter as companies spent heavily on direct response channels such as DM and sales promotion to boost volumes (see chart 1 below).
More than a fifth (21%) of the 300 marketers polled revised their budgets up in the fourth quarter, compared to 17% that cut spend. The net balance, 3.4%, is an improvement on the 2.2% registered in the second quarter.
Chris Williamson, chief economist at financial information service Markit and author of the report, says that investment in direct marketing and sales promotion by brands looking for a short-term volume increase “in the face of weak demand” helped lift spend.
Retailers, driven by the major supermarkets, have been investing heavily in price cuts to entice reluctant shoppers struggling with rising bills.

Man City are first Premier League YouTube partner

Manchester City has become YouTube’s first ever English Premier League content partner as the club ramps up its digital activity to increase fan engagement and revenue.

The deal allows Manchester City to manage advertising around the content on its official YouTube channel as it looks to grow its reach at home and internationally. The partnership also enables the club to control their rights-owned or club-created YouTube videos.
The club recently hired former AKQA senior executive Julian Pate as its head of marketing, responsible for leading Manchester City’s “digital expansion” strategy, alongside head of digital Richard Ayers.
Ayers says the deal is the first move in laying the foundations of the club’s syndication drive as it looks to partner with more brands online.
He adds: “The ability to extend our reach and to increase accessibility to audiences is great, but we’re also looking forward to exploring the differentiating factors of YouTube, like using annotations, making bespoke interactive video and, more than anything else, becoming part of the thriving YouTube community.”
Other examples of Manchester City’s recent digital campaigns include its first music app and a digital membership scheme for season ticket holders, which included augmented reality content.
first posted here

Brands make emails land on welcome mat

Retail brands are making best use of technology to achieve high open and response rates for email campaigns, according to new research.

Consumers think brands are getting better at email marketing, but the window for grabbing their attention is relatively small, according to the results of an annual email tracking study, seen by Marketing Week.
The research of 1,800 consumers, commissioned by the Direct Marketing Association and carried out by fast.MAP, reveals that 23 out of 24 brands in the survey have improved their email marketing in consumers’ eyes since 2010. The biggest improvement is achieved by Argos, with a seven-point increase in the percentage of people who say it uses email to good effect.
The only brand to slip backwards is Somerfield, which was taken over by The Co-op in 2008. However, its score decreased by less than one percentage point.
The public’s attitude toward brands’ email communications is progressively improving, says Dela Quist, chief executive of email consultancy Alchemy Worx, which contributed to the study. “Consumers view the emails that they sign up to very differently from the general white noise that is out there,” he says.
This tallies with the findings of this year’s Email Attitudes research done by Digital Strategy, part of Marketing Week, which shows that while marketers are sending more emails than they did last year, open and click-through rates are increasing (Digital Strategy September 2011).
John Lewis head of online marketing Emma McLaughlin says the improvement owes in part to the use of increasingly sophisticated technology. Software can now adjust the frequency of emails according to how often an individual consumer opens or clicks on them and can segment customers so that messages can be targeted to the right people. She adds that emails can therefore be made more personally relevant and customers’ responses have improved as a result.

Online spend hits all time high

Growing investment in video and social media by FMCG companies helped drive online advertising spend to a half-year high of £2.26bn, according to the latest PwC IAB report.

Online’s share of UK ad spend was 27% in the first six months of 2011, the report adds, up from 25% in the second half of 2010. Online ad spend – which does not include mobile ad spend – increased 13.5% over the same period last year.
The study claims the UK advertising sector grew by just 1.4% year on year in the same period.
According to the IAB, growth has been fuelled by an increase in FMCG spend online of which the category now accounts for 14.5% of all online display ad spend, second only to finance which accounts for 15.6%.
In 2009 the share of digital ad spend proportioned to FMCG was just 9%, showing a significant rise in just two years.

The Co-op looks to build recognition for “strong and powerful” brand

The Co-operative Group has launched the biggest piece of consumer insight research it has ever done to develop a stronger brand message across all its business groups.

The company, which has divisions in retail, holidays, banking and funeral care, is hoping to find out “what consumers love about the Co-op and what they love less” and will then build and strengthen its marketing and brand strategy with the consumer at the heart of everything it does.
Gill Barr, The Co-op’s group marketing director who joined in January says: “This is an enormous company and we participate in a lot of different sectors. The Co-op brand is a strong and powerful thing, but there are still too many people that don’t understand why we’re so different. So we want to make sure we’re getting the Co-op message out in the right way to the right people.”
“It’s a difficult job because The Co-op is a legacy brand and because it has to be articulated across sectors from funerals to holidays,” she adds.
The Co-op is also creating a group brand director role to oversee the group brand on a strategic level, working across all business units and the group brand as a whole, taking in all areas of the marketing mix from operational execution to brand strategy.
First posted here

B2B firms failing on social media

Business to business firms are wasting millions on social media strategies that do not fully exploit the opportunities the channel offers, according to a report.

Almost half of B2B companies are not measuring return on investment or using only basic qualitative measures, according to a PwC study.
The study claims despite investment of up to $1.85m (£1.18m) on social media from some of those polled, the majority appear to have “limited strategies” that fail to exploit sales opportunities.
Less than 12% of organisations surveyed have full time social media teams in place, the study found.
Sean Mahdi, director in PwC’s digital transformation group, says that B2B firms need to look at consumer facing companies, which are using social media more effectively, and profitably.
He adds: “Social media is changing the way people work, shop, receive service and relate to one another.
“Businesses also need to change the way they engage with customers, whose trust is increasingly invested in their peers, rather than in the brands with which they interact. Business audience and buyers are people influenced by the same forces that influence retail consumers. In fact, they are those consumers.”
First published here

Aston Martin retains coolest brand crown

Aston Martin, famed for its appearance in James Bond films, has been named the “coolest brand” for the second year running keeping Apple off the top spot, according to the annual CoolBrands survey by SuperBrands.

Aston Martin has retained the position after knocking Apple’s iPhone off the top spot in last year’s survey.
Five of the Top Ten coolest brands are technology brands including as Apple, Google and YouTube, while automotive and sports/fashion brands take the rest of the spots.
CoolBrands polls 2,000 members of the public who vote on a list of brands selected by a panel of experts from the creative industries.

The Top Ten coolest brands are:
Aston Martin
Apple
Harley-Davidson
Rolex
Bang & Olufsen
BlackBerry
Google
Ferrari
Nike
YouTube
First published here

Spurs brand refresh pushes club’s “flair, style and adventure”

Tottenham Hotspur has overhauled its visual identity, one of a raft of measures the Premier League club is planning in a bid to exploit what it has identified as its core values – “flair, style and adventure”.

The North London side hopes the changes – which will see the colours, fonts and the tone of voice used in all its marketing materials updated – will differentiate the club from rivals and boost income from sponsors and fans.
The aim of the refresh, according to the club’s commercial director Charlie Wijeratna, is to get people to recognise the club’s communications without seeing its logo.
Speaking after the Sports Marketing 360 conference in London, Wijeratna, who has driven the changes since joining from Locog last year, says that his team have spent nine months defining the club’s brand values, which have been based on the club’s reputation for playing good football and the adventurous attitude of Harry Hotpur, from whom Tottenham is said to have taken its name.
The global reach of the Premier League, he argues, means clubs have been too quick to sell their “tangible” assets – such as pitch side advertising and hospitality – to exploit commercial partnerships but not “intangible” assets such as imagery and values.

Alcohol brands beef up social media regulation

The European Forum for Responsible Drinking (EFRD) and the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) have collaborated to create a common set of principles for alcohol brands using social media.

Alcohol brands wanting to use social networks, blogs, mobile apps and user generated content will have to follow new guidelines, set out by the organisations in Europe and the US, from 30 September.
The guidelines will focus on consistent age checking across social media, enforce regular monitoring of brands social media pages and the removal of inappropriate content and ensuring that European drinks brands report back on commitments to prove the effectiveness of the self regulation model.
Alan Butler, Chairman of the EFRD, which represents major spirits brands including Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Moet Hennessy, Bacardi, Beam Global Spirits and Wine and Brown Forman, says: “Digital marketing is becoming increasingly important in our engagement with consumers. These new guidelines will ensure that we apply the same high standards to all new media channels and technologies such as Mobile applications or social media platforms such as Facebook.”
EFRD will now launch a European road show to promote the guidelines and has invited UK alcohol regulatory organization Portman Group to head up the initiative.

Brands grapple with social media conundrum: Does it pay?

What does a ’Like’ actually mean for a brand’s bottom line? Marketers at this year’s Cannes Lions divulged both their challenges and new solutions.
The rising credence of digital and social media activity in the world of brands was highlighted at the annual Cannes Lions festival last week as more non-traditional campaigns than ever were considered for awards.
From Procter & Gamble’s Old Spice viral phenomenon, to the new “Pay with a Tweet” online content trading platform, to Google Chrome’s collaboration with the band Arcade Fire; Cannes Lions award winners this year demonstrated unprecedented cult status borne out of an innovative idea.
But amidst the standard sun, sea, sand and champagne, marketers were asking some serious questions. Social elements such as views on YouTube and ’Likes’ on Facebook can all make for impressive numbers when brands distribute the right content, but does it actually make a difference to a marketer’s ultimate goals?
In his presentation last week, Diageo chief marketing officer Andy Fennell outlined the challenge in measuring the effectiveness of ’social’ brand activity: “How do you put a price on engagement? We need to find more accurate and contemporary ways to see if an activity works rather than wait to see if a product sells more.”

CSR as a tool for competitiveness and productivity

Corporate social responsibility provides competitive advantage in an evolving business environment?
The current economic and social climate in the UAE has put competitiveness, sustainability and responsible business at the top of the agenda. Whilst corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices have been controversially associated with improving brand recognition and enhancing a company’s reputation, this has neglected CSR’s potential of improving efficiency, productivity and market orientation. Rather, having a CSR strategy embedded within a business model not only serves in gaining a competitive advantage by increasing reputational appeal; but responds to changing stakeholder demands in an evolving environment.
The Dubai Chamber and PepsiCo launched the first comprehensive study of CSR and corporate governance in the UAE, finding that 42% of respondents believe that CSR increases productivity. However, 66% of companies in Dubai cited that a lack of awareness and financial resources prevented them from taking part in CSR initiatives.

Coaches across Continents a not for profit making the news

Coaches across Continents is an international development organization that educates local communities to design and implement social development programs using soccer as the teaching tool.  As one of our first clients we are proud to be associated with this internationally recognised organisation.

Coaches across Continents is unique. Recognising that responsiveness to local needs is the key to effective learning and thus local sustainability, Coaches across Continents is the only development organisation that has a proven track record in using soccer as a vehicle for social change in developing communities. Recognition of our success is growing. CaC constantly receives requests to work with partner organizations and to prepare volunteers to work responsively within differing communities.

These volunteers are trained to assess local needs, to select from a range of curriculum options the most relevant approaches and to focus continually on the development of the particular life skills needed in each and every unique community.

One size does not fit all.  Communities need help to create their own development approaches; approaches which are responsive to their situation, tailored to their needs, mindful of their people, designed for sustainability. Coaches across Continents provides the help, the expertise, the skills that communities need.

When you think Coaches across Continents, think ’partnerships’, think ’responsiveness’, think ’sustainability, think ’soccer as a vehicle for social change in developing communities’.

Companies increasingly using social networks to win customers.

More than two fifths (41%) of UK companies are using social networking sites to win new business, according to a study.
The number of companies in the UK using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to attract new customers has risen by 8 percentage points, up from 33%, in the last year, claims office solutions company Regus.
Businesses in the UK are now devoting a third of their marketing budgets towards social networking campaigns.
About half of all businesses in the UK and globally actively encourage their employees to join online professional networks such as LinkedIn.
Globally, the number of businesses recruiting new customers via social networks has increased 7%, with 52% of companies worldwide using the channel to engage with their audiences.
More than two fifths (41%) of UK companies are using social networking sites to win new business, according to a study.
The number of companies in the UK using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to attract new customers has risen by 8 percentage points, up from 33%, in the last year, claims office solutions company Regus.
Businesses in the UK are now devoting a third of their marketing budgets towards social networking campaigns.
About half of all businesses in the UK and globally actively encourage their employees to join online professional networks such as LinkedIn.
Globally, the number of businesses recruiting new customers via social networks has increased 7%, with 52% of companies worldwide using the channel to engage with their audiences.

There has been debate in the industry over the merits of social media and whether it truly is accountable for the success of campaigns.
Celia Donne, regional director at Regus, says: “As businesses emerge from the downturn they are increasingly reconsidering pre-recession working practices and opting for more flexible, competitive strategies.”

Are charities killing their own brands?

Charities are among the organisations hardest hit by government cuts, and now the industry’s own watchdog has delivered some cautionary figures on how they target their marketing communications.
According to the annual report of the Fundraising Standards Board (FRSB), complaints have increased significantly in the past year. One-sixth of them are now related to data management issues, such as contacting dead people or failing to recognise that consumers have opted out of communications.
Worse still, direct mail accounts for more than half of all complaints. Perhaps the most salutary warning is that these complaints increased by 86% year on year in 2010, despite a 27% decrease in the volume of messages sent.
As a proportion of people approached, the level of complaints is not in itself too worrying for these organisations. But at a time when regular donors – and therefore good data – are becoming more important to charities’ financial health, it is a cause for concern that their data management is getting worse, not better.
A good database of supporters and prospective supporters is now a charity’s bread and butter, as Marketing Week wrote in January. Research by fast.MAP underlined the phenomenal loyalty of regular donors, with nearly half of those surveyed saying that they have supported their chosen charity for at least ten years.
This is undoubtedly why so many voluntary organisations are employing so-called ’chuggers’ (or ’charity muggers’) to solicit the personal details of passers-by on the street. Charities must believe it is effective in signing up donors, but it is also losing them a lot of goodwill from the general public.
This method of fundraising received the highest number of complaints as a proportion of the donors acquired. These are not included in the aforementioned figure for data management complaints, but they are surely relevant in dictating charities’ data strategies.
A bad one will seriously damage a charity’s brand in the eyes of those most important to the organisation – the consumers who have cared enough to show an interest and hand over their data. Charities can ill afford this at a time when funding from local and national government is disappearing.
Of course, charities deserve sympathy. Maintaining a clean database and working out how to use it effectively is a costly and time-consuming business – probably one that seems like a luxury when budgets are tightening.
Maybe some charities believe the costs they avoid by cutting back on data management and the donors they do attract by less popular methods make up for anything lost in the perception of their brands.
But the cost of acquiring supporters is rising, and payback on that investment can take years. If bad data loses you a donor, or someone who might otherwise have donated, it could be a long time before you can recover that lost income.
By Michael Barnett
One of the most interesting aspects of our work is for charities, not for profits and corporate social responsibility programmes – marketing and branding principles apply for these organisations as they do for commercial organisations.  Check out our work with Coaches Across Continents! (we will be doing an indepth profile in the coming weeks)

“What is and Why is” Sustainability Marketing so Important?

Why Sustainability Marketing?Sustainable marketing is about what you market – creating brands and businesses fit for the future – and the way in which you market – providing clear, relevant information and campaigns to create both profit and positive societal change. It involves product/service innovation, effective communications and influencing consumer behaviour to be more sustainable.
There are not enough planets to sustain current levels of consumption, particularly as the world’s population grows and competition for resources increases. Add to this the many social problems associated with excessive consumption, such as long-term ill-health and social inequality, and the issues are too great to ignore any longer.
Marketing has traditionally been seen as part of the problem, helping to create the many unsustainable habits we now need to change – but it can also be part of the solution, making new alternatives desirable and mainstream.

Creating an Emotional Brand like Apple

Ask marketers and advertising experts why Mac users are so loyal, and they all cite the same reason: Apple’s brand.
It’s no coincidence that during the late 1980s and early 1990s it was a marketing executive from Pepsi, John Sculley, who turned Apple into the biggest single computer company in the world, with $11 billion in annual sales. Sculley marketed Apple like crazy, boosting the advertising budget from $15 million to $100 million.
“People talk about technology, but Apple was a marketing company,” Sculley told the Guardian newspaper in 1997. “It was the marketing company of the decade.”
The current CEO, Steve Jobs, spent $100 million marketing the iMac, which was a run-away hit. Apple continues to spend lots of money on high-profile ads like the “Switch” campaign, and it shows.