Facebook vs. Google: The Fight for Advertising's Future

July 29, 2009 by Paul McEnany in Advertising (sorta), Social Media, social networking

“Today, the Google-Facebook rivalry isn't just going strong, it has evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the Internet—its structure, design, and utility. For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this "social graph" to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now.”

The struggle between Facebook and Google represents some of the same challenges happening in the advertising industry now. Those with the belief that “data is everything” complain that advertising hasn’t yet worked in social spaces, mostly because click through rates are even more terrible than usual and banners are ignored.

Data strives to make things black and white. People make things nuanced and contradictory. But I think Facebook’s struggle should be a guide for many of us working in advertising, whether we’re technically advertising or not.

Those of us that really give a shit about understanding people, the ones who a ren’t likely to buy into the massive new ads from the OPA, those that felt queasy about interstitials even if they did give a higher click through rate, aren’t anti-data. But that data should be used to support our missions, not create them.

A cold-hearted reliance on numbers alone can make you small-minded and myopic. It can lead you to take shortcuts in the name of trial. It can bundle you in short-term success, celebrating fixing the coffee maker in a sinking ship.

Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” I would venture to guess that he didn’t mean that knowledge is unimportant, but simply a tool to inform and check our creativity, not one meant to dictate each following step.

As I’ve been saying of late. Balance is everything. Data can’t explain meaning. Nor does an insight or an uncovered behavior describe a person in whole. So keep the curiosity and fearlessness of your gut and the layered understanding that data can provide, both tempered by the knowledge the neither are absolute.

“I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.”

-David Ogilvy

Familiar, no?

(background photo via rabinal)

Top Non-Entertainment Brands on Facebook

June 14, 2009 by Paul McEnany in Social Media

Social brands clearly don't become so because of their social media strategy. They are so because of who they are. It's the fundamental misunderstanding that make those that call themselves "social media experts" questionable at best. The moment you label yourself by that name, you've removed yourself from the parts of the conversation that actually make brands work in the space. Instead they become tasked with building facebook pages, resizing twitter backgrounds until they fit, randomly following anyone who unfortunately utters a phrase remotely related to the products they sell.

And so I'm not misunderstood, much of that is still important. Understanding the nomenclature, the ability to differentiate and remain interesting in social spaces is critical. But doing so in a vacuum is merely a series of band-aids, not dissimilar to a brands sales spike during peaks in an advertising cycle. GM may know a thing or two about that.

But 20 of the top 200 fan pages on facebook are brand-related, minus entertainment, and that may sound pretty good. 10% would actually be more than I expected, frankly.

But a closer look would reveal a slew of unofficial pages fed by their fans, random memes, stuff like that. 11 of them are official, the largest of which was a true fan page that was taken over by the brand (in a good way). And of the top 20, only 16 companies are actually represented. Anyway, interesting to see how basic the vast majority of these fan pages actually are. Most didn't need to be tricked up too much, people wanted to share them already.

Point being - solving the social media problem means solving the social problem, which doesn't have much to do with social media.

8.     Coca-Cola     3,462,807 (unofficial, then given to or purchased by brand)
10.     Nut ella     3,205,591 (unofficial)
18.     Pringles     2,774,256 (official, doing some videos, etc.)
40.     Starbucks Coffee Company     2,307,465 (official, good feed)
55.     adidas Originals     1,944,196 (official)
61.     McDonald's     1,870,132 (unofficial)
100.     Toblerone     1,496,941 (unofficial)
105.     Nike Shoes     1,463,321 (unofficial)
109.     Converse All Star     1,450,969 (unofficial)
112.     CONVERSE     1,418,670 (unofficial)
120.     REESE'S     1,380,962 (official, doing some interesting stuff with college program)
132.     OREO cookies     1,334,269 (official)
139.     Starbucks Frappuccino     1,297,731 (official)
158.     PUMA     1,212,972 (official)
172.     ipods     1,175,028 (unofficial)
178.     oreos     1,166,410 (unofficial)
187.     H&M     1,133,591 (official, applications)
188.     MTV     1,133,246 (official)
189.     MTV     1,129,701 (unofficial)
194.     Red Bull     1,103,357 (official, good feed, applications)

Ranking via PageData Photo via Nicky Deez

Social Media Myopia

March 17, 2009 by Paul McEnany in Social Media

Social media strategies are bullshit. It’s a thought crystallized by the swarm of social media experts and aficionados descending on Austin for SXSW. To be honest, I’m not even sure why it had that effect exactly. Maybe it was the 80% iPhone penetration or what the Romans called the “twitterati ubiquita.” I do think it’s largely a product of what those tools do, not just what they are, but it’s hard not to scratch your head when you say tweetdeck and there are no scrunched faces. Particularly when something like AOL community gets 4 times the traffic. The jury is clearly still out on whether twitter is an essential personal tool or the second-coming of second life.

But here’s the thing, social media is something that you are, not something you do. And when you talk about it like it’s another channel, it becomes an add-on to an existing infrastructure, not the transformational cultural shift that it should require.

Don't get me wrong, there are great social media broadcasters out there. They have tons of friends, fans or followers. But their issue is that they're not really taking full advantage of their sphere because people are coming together around a brand asset already held. And frankly, that doesn’t require all that much strategy. Coke might have a good fan group on Facebook, but that doesn't really come from anything other than a shit load of existing brand reputation. Or more simply, it's easy to get a brand talked about when everyone likes talking about them anyway. If I were the social media agency for pot, I could just start a facebook group and get 250,000 fans pretty easily and look like a hero.

But that’s really the point I think, the brands that are positioned well for facebook or twitter or myspace or whatever we’re talking about tomorrow, are so because of who they are, not what they do in any one channel. For companies to thrive, what we should be talking about is something much more fundamental, much more cultural and important than you might be able to talk about if they’ve slotted you or your company as “those guys getting us facebook hits or views on youtube.” If that’s all it’s about, you won’t be left with much when those platforms are gone. And considering that Google, a company just moving out of the dorm room 10 years ago, would be the closest thing to the quaker oats of internet brands, I’d consider the transient nature of the web to be a high-level concern for all of us.

Which is partly why I’m so taken by transmedia planning, and why I don’t consider it just a new branding technique, but the central consideration for the ad industry to not just survive year after year, but thrive through a media landscape that will look much different in 5 years. Is what we’re doing building communities, not through a series of platform tactics, but the exploration of who we are and what makes us important to them?

Do we matter?

(by the way - read Mike's take on the use of Social Media. Or how it's been used. Well worth it.)

UPDATE: These new numbers from Nielsen indicate twitter is up to 7mm uniques, twice the size of aol community, and they were roughly equal just in December, so I stand corrected on that point.

Making SXSW Awesomer - 2 Panels at a Time

August 15, 2008 by Paul McEnany in Social Media

Well, I've already found 2 panels I won't be missing at this year's SXSW Interactive, assuming you get off your lazy ass and make sure it happens. Okay, well you could also stay on your lazy ass and just go here and here, give SXSW a "yes, please" by submitting a couple five star votes, and that would be just fine, too.

First up, Alan Wolk's (better known as the Tangerine Toad) panel, dubbed Your Brand is Not My Friend, the namesake of this blog post that earned Alan a ton of notoriety.

People generally don’t want to hear from brands on Facebook and MySpace. The whole appeal of social media sites is their independence from corporate advertisers. People like the fact that they can say whatever they want to other people without any interference from anyone or anything that seems "official."

Joining Alan on the panel will be Click Here Experience Planner and Chaos Scenario's Cam Beck, Head of Strategy at the Barbarian Group Noah Brier, and the woman the entire blogosphere knows, marketing specialist Christina Kerley. The panel will be moderated by Adweek's Brian Morrissey.

Next up is panel member from 2008 SXSW's The Future of Corporate Blogging Mack Collier, and his proposed panel for 2009, Co-Created Marketing: Embracing Your Customer Evangelists Online.

What if you found your most passionate customers online, and let them market for you? Would the world implode? Or could embracing your customer evangelists online be the best business decision you make? Together, we'll unmask who customer evangelists are, and show how you can embrace them via social media and other online tools.

Proposed moderator Mack has teamed up with panelist Mario Sundar, Community Evangelist for Linked In (and fellow political junkie), Jackie Huba from Church of the Customer blog and author of the brilliant book Creating Customer Evangelists and finally Virginia Miracle, SVP of Digital Strategy at Ogilvy PR's 360 Digital Influence group and one of the minds behind one of the most successful community building programs, the Fiskateers.

I'd be shocked if either one of these panels didn't make the final cut, but it's your turn to make doubly sure that this is the case.

Vote for Your Brand is Not My Friend

Vote for Co-Created Marketing: Embracing Your Customer Evangelists Online

Voices of the Summer Games

July 09, 2008 by Paul McEnany in Social Media

Kaitlyn Wilkins along with Rohit Bhargava and the rest of the 360 Digital Influence group have brought to launch the new web 2.0-ification of the summer games site by Lenovo, featuring blogging athletes from around the world being pulled together at Voices of the Olympic Games. They'll be traveling to Beijing to live-blog and live-tweet (@lenovo2008) the experience while the rest of us salivate with jealousy.

The "low-down":

"Over the past few months we identified 100 athletes from all different countries and sports who had an interest in either maintaining an existing blog, or starting a blog for the first time, leading up to the Games. Each athlete was given a new Lenovo IdeaPad and FlipCam and any training/support they needed, all we asked in return is that they display a badge identifying themselves as a participant and post to their blog at least once a week. (They were in no way required to review the product, or even mention Lenovo on their blog.) Feeds from all athlete blogs are now being pulled into the main Voices of the Olympic Games site where you can sort by athlete, language or country. With this being the first "Web 2.0" Olympics, with athlete blogging sanctioned by the IOC, Lenovo saw this as a great opportunity to give athletes the power and technology they needed to share their experiences directly with fans."

Again, cool as shit. Social media done right. But Kaitlyn, do they have Montell Jordan in Beijing? Somehow I doubt it. Score one for McEnany.