Julian Cole - Communications Planning and Digital Strategy -

The Perfect Gift for a Man

So if you are like me and struggle with buying Christmas and birthday presents, do not stress I have your brother and dad sorted this Christmas!

Back in June, a number of bloggers (including myself) shared some really personal stories about what it means to be a man for the Inspire Foundation's Man Week. There were a number of amazing heart felt stories, at the time it felt like something really big.

The super smart Gavin Heaton and Mark Pollard took the idea to the next level, they helped to get the story beyond the blogosphere bubble by creating a book ‘The Perfect Gift for a Man’ which was a collection of stories about being a man. Below is Gavin helping to get the story out on KAK.

If you would like to purchase a hard copy of the book you can buy it from Blurb.com or you can buy the e-Book from The Perfect Gift for a Man website. The profits will all go to The Inspire Foundation, so dig deep!

Case Study: Yves Klein Blue Twitter Application

Problem
Yves Klein Blue are an indie/rock band who in June were about to release a new album Ragged and Ecstatic. With the release of the new album it was hoped that it would become a Top 40 selling album.

Strategy
To captalise on the growing success YKB were having with Twitter we decided to leverage one of the recent innovations through Twitter which was a Twitter application which allowed someone to download an mp3 when they tweeted a unique code for, this had been used by TRVS-DJAM weeks earlier.

We proposed that Yves Klein Blue would allow people to download one of their songs and go in the running for VIP tickets to Splendour in the Grass if they tweeted a specific code.

Implementation
We used Culture Jam who built the original TRVS-DJAM application to build the site/app for us. For launch, we went out to Yves Klein Blue existing social network and communicated the offer.

TRV$DJAM Twitter Promotion Screencast from Culture Jam on Vimeo.

We then went out to a number of influential music tweeters/bloggers and made them aware of the offer.

Results
We were hoping for 1,200 downloads of the song (estimated that of their current social network that 15% would tweet the offer and they would influence one person in their twitter following to do the same).

We ended up falling significantly short of this target with only 432 downloads of the track.

The silver lining was that we were able to double the size of YKB Twitter following in two weeks, they went from followers 487 to 1,017 in three weeks. It took 5 months to get their first 487 followers.

Learnings
I really think that you learn more from the campaigns that do not match your expectations than the ones that do.

Size of Twitter in Australia
Twitter is really really small in Australia. Twitter has 250,000 active Australian users. That is nothing! That is 3.5% of the size of Facebook. When you are trying to find a niche of fans, it probably would have been better to not make it even harder for ourselves by launching on a niche platform.

Locking in influentials
Locking in relevant influential Tweeters (music+following) prior to
launch is essential

Easier site navigation
We got 1,700 visitors to the site and only 432 followers. The drop between visitors and downloaders indicates that the bulk of users did not have twitter accounts or couldn’t be bothered to follow the steps

Mix of earned and paid media
We can’t rely on publicity to drive traffic to an application, since doing this venture with YKB we realized that it requires a mix of earned and paid media for an idea to kick off in the social media environment.

Comparing the Australian and US audiences
Be cautious when making comparisons between the US and Australia. Travis Barker and DJ-AM at the time had a substantial following, YKB did not.  

A digital music mystery: Australian Idol Fan to Follower anomaly, Do you know the answer?

What is the difference between a Facebook Fan and a Twitter follower?

I have been doing a bit of research into Australian music artists and their number of fans online. My hypothesis was the more album you sold, the more fans you would have on Myspace, Twitter and Facebook.

My white paper that I will release soon, finds benchmarks for ARIA charting artist. I have found the average number of Facebook fans, Myspace friends and Twitter followers of an artist should increase depending on what level of sales they got to on the ARIA chart (Gold, Platinium or 2x Platinium).

But I noticed one really interesting pattern, ex-Australian Idol contestants index really low on Facebook Fans but then really high on Twitter Followers?

For instance, a Gold (35,000+ album/single sales) selling artist the average number of Facebook Fans is 14,000 (e.g Karnivool, Bliss N Eso and Pnau all have between 10-15k for fans). However Australian Idol contestants Wes Carr and Ricki-Lee have a very low number of fans (2000 and 1,700 fans respectively). However when you look at Twitter followers the average is 1,300 followers but Wes and Ricki-Lee have triple that number with 3900 and 3800 respectively?!?!

So why is it that Australian Idol contestants index so low on Facebook fans yet so high on Twitter followers?

I have got no idea, I would be really keen to hear your theory on why this phenomena is occurring. Free Guy Sebastian album for the person who comes up with the right answer!

Case Study: My Year Without Sex Social Media Campaign

Problemo: My Year Without Sex was a new Australian film, which was hard to market as it didn’t fit into one specific category. The trailer was not going to be enough to get people to watch it. Working on a small budget we needed to get people to talk about the film.

Strategy: Use word of mouth to help fuel discussion around the movie

Implementation:

Identifying Key Environments
We identified the target market as mothers. Using Google Ad Planner and a number of other tools we looked for the environments where mothers were most vocal online and three environments stood out; Facebook, Mothers Forums and Mother Blogs.

Part 1: Mothers Forums
We went out to a number of the major mothers forums and offered the Moderators of the sites free double passes to see the film. Forums host some of the liveliest discussions online.

Part 2: Blogs
We identified a number of influential female blogs that we thought would enjoy the film. These bloggers were found using the Top 100 Australian Women Bloggers list. From this list we got a number of high profile bloggers to go and see the movie. We also used the NuffNang to outreach to a further 20 bloggers.

Part 3: Facebook
There was an opportunity to get a number of people along to a pre screening for the film in each major cities. We used Facebook Advertising and a Facebook Event to set up an exclusive Facebook Pre Screening for 500 people. We also ran a Facebook Page which had further information about the movie.

Part 4: Youtube - Creating a piece of passable content
We decided to create a piece of content around the film which we believed could have mass appeal online. We created the ‘5 Things that get in the way of Sex’ video. We were able to get this video to the front page of Digg and then Youtube Honour Board with 25,000 views in one week. This ended up being the feature of a blog post in Sydney Morning Herald Ask Sam Blog.

Result:
In its opening week MYWS took $177,522 and has currently grossed $1,127,838 in box office sales.

Learnings:
Facebook Page
It is really hard for someone to become a fan of a product that they have no knowledge about. We did not see growth in the Page until after the release date which usually does not work with the timings/budgeting of films.

Facebook Advertising
This campaign ran from early April to May this year, this was before the upgrade to the Facebook advertising model. We were only able to manage to get 900 people into the Page for the movie, when we promoted Cedar Boys another Australian film we were able to get 2,000 easily into the Page. So this new upgrade has definitely made a difference.

The 'R' in Social Media Revolution stands for 'Rubbish'

Next week this blog will turn 3 years old, there has been a change in direction over the past 12 months. Last year I used to speak about social media as a revolution that would change the way businesses would approach marketing! WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH!

After working in an agency for a year, I realised that social media will actually be an evolution of the current digital/advertising model. I find there is still to many of these revolutionary spruikers in the blogosphere who are referencing one off social media examples as proof of the revolution! I think what is needed is more people sharing stories about first hand experience on how they overcame barriers (money/legal/administration) and how they integrated social media into their current digital/advertising model.

Revolutionary Social Media spruikers are good for one thing, they help to get people who know nothing about social media excited about the possibility of the technology. However, once this excitement dies down, there needs to be information on what people can actually do.

I guess what I am trying to say is, I am thinking of scraping the name Adspace-Pioneers.blogspot.com and going with the name examples_of_social_media_being_used_in_digital_campaigns_and_other_shit.blogspot.com

Facebook Page Growth: 30-40% attributed to earned media

Facebook is really helping to close the gap between advertising and social media. It now gives brands the opportunity to incorporate and track both paid and earned media in the one place.

Doing some analysis over three Pages (The Contender Australia, Grinspoon, Vanessa Amorosi) I am currently working on I worked out that for every three people that join a Page through paid media, they will indirectly influence two friends within their network to join the Page via the suggestion box/highlight or news feeds of their friends pages.

Lode cash in on the indirect earned media 'Suggestions' spot

In my opinion Facebook is the only social platform that has an advertising model that is worth investing in. We are seeing some of the smart agencies in Australia pick up on this and really launch some big exciting campaigns through the platform Telstra Digital Mums (DDB), The Skinny Cow (Publicis Digital), 5 Seeds (Holler), and Lynx (SOAP).

Methodology: Since the upgrade to Facebook Ads in June 2009, they now give you action rates which is how many people become a fan directly from the ad. So subtracting this action rate number from your Page growth gives you the viral growth rate, I then made that number into a percentage (Grinspoon - 34%, Vanessa Amorosi - 39% and The Contender - 40%). I would love it if anyone else would like to share their stats

Case Study: Victoria's Secret Facebook Page and Monash Uni's Electronic Marketing Course

Here is a great case study of Victoria's Secret Pink Social Marketing/Facebook Campaign

The video was created by students Mark and Natalie as part of the Electronic Marketing course which lecturer/legend Peter Wagstaff is teaching at Monash University.

Fellow student/blogger Rick Clarke and James Moran are also doing the subject so I asked them for a few words on the course.

'Instead of writing an essay, one of our tasks was to create a short instructional video, and share it with the class (and the world!) via YouTube. We made our video on the evolution of the web from Web 1.0 through to Web 2.0, and speculated what Web 3.0 might be like.'

In related news, Lode a graduate recruiting company have a great little Facebook promotion going on at the moment. They are giving graduates the chance to score one of three summer internships at Lonely Planet, Thiess or PWC. All you have to do is explain in 100 words or less, why you think you are the best candidate for the job.