Hasta La Creative!

A new feature, See It, is meant to make it easy to move from reading comments about a show to watching that show.

The sweet, innocent ideas and ruthless power plays that created Twitter.

Burt’s Bees and its agency Baldwin & are having fun with Instagram and Vine (as it should be).

The company is using stop-motion animation to create uber-abbreviated versions of classic novels. In Little Women, for example, one Civil War-era lip balm woman says to another, “We really are quite little.” “And each of us women,” her sister replies.

According to Marketing Daily, these new Vines are being staged by Jethro Ames, in San Francisco. Ames needs about four hours to shoot each six-second spot, after which it must go live or be discarded. No post work is possible.

Burt’s is also rolling out an Instagram campaign, featuring the company’s reclusive founder, Burt Shavitz in backwoods Maine.

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For the first time, Burt’s Bees is promoting its seven mainstay, “classic” products as a group. These “classics” include Beeswax Lip Balm, Coconut Foot Cream, Shea Butter Hand Repair Cream, Hand Salve, Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream, Almond Milk Beeswax Hand Cream and Res-Q Ointment. To promote their classic lineup, Burt’s Bees is reinterpreting a few classics in a new format. Burt’s Bees and agency Baldwin& are using 6-second stop motion animated Vines interpreting seven classics of literature: Little Women, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Gulliver’s Travels, Metamorphosis, Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, and Julius Caesar.

The humorous Vines highlight the time-tested nature of Burt’s Bees products, suggesting they will last as long as the classic literature they pay homage to. Of course, Burt’s Bees products are actually featured in the Vines, such as the lip balm in “Little Women” who declare “We really are quite little. And each of us women.” These classic vines are staged by Vine animator Jethro Ames of San Francisco, using in-camera stop-motion shooting for each Vine. The process takes about four hours to complete, with no post-production possible.

The first two “Classic Vines” to roll out are Little Women (featured above) and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (featured after the jump).” In a small, prequel campaign that marries the new and the classic in a different way, founder Burt Shavitz will post about his backwoods Maine life on Instagram. This “Classic Burts” campaign contrasts a classic, traditional lifestyle with the hustle and bustle of modern social media, such as a photo of Burt splitting logs with the caption “Innovative home heating system.” This campaign from Baldwin& is refreshingly non self-serious and makes sense for a company whose selling point is that they make a no-frills, quality product out of classic materials. We’re guessing it didn’t exactly break the bank either. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Speakers at an annual conference said the pace and scope of technological and societal changes required what one called a “constant reinvention” of the marketing process.

What business goals can social media help your company achieve?

Brand exposure and increased engagement are workable goals. But what about customer service? Is this opportunity woven into your social marketing strategy?

Mike Proulx, senior vice president and director of social media at Hill Holliday, says, “Far beyond a clever tweet, people want great products and service, and they want to feel heard.”

I agree. But do we have any data on this? Decision makers need data!

Forrester’s Nate Elliott, for one, is lending a hand.

The average online American fits into Forrester’s ‘Social Snackers’ category — they don’t shy away from social interactions with brands and companies, but neither do they frequently seek out such interactions. Marketers targeting this audience should treat social tools as a secondary, rather than a primary, part of their marketing plan.

Are your customers and prospects social snackers? The probability is high. But they may fall into one of Forrester’s other categories: Skippers, Savvies or Stars.

Back to Proulx’s contention for a moment. I agree that people want to be heard and cared for by customer service reps, online and in person. But how does this jive with Forrester’s Snacker persona? Do Snackers, who are in the majority, want deep engagement with brands they follow online? I think the answer is yes, but only when it matters. When there’s a billing dispute or a service error of some sort, it matters.

Given how many of us are Snackers, what are brands are doing all day, every day in social media channels?

There’s no doubt that the chance to add value is there, staring every brand in the face. But effectively delivering on the promise of SMM means coming up with the perfect mix of social updates for your clearly identified audience (see above) — say 30% brand building, 50% conversational/relationship building, and 20% promotional, or whatever ratios your market situation calls for.

One pro who knows what the situation calls for is Pete Blackshaw, global head of digital marketing and social media at Nestlé.

People tend to romanticize social media, fans and followers, but there are some really difficult operational questions that need to be asked. How do you ensure you’re properly staffing and resourcing and responding, and doing so 24/7? And with nearly 170 million fans across over 750 brand pages on Facebook alone, this is no easy task.

…Social media is a reflection of brand love, or in some cases issues that people have with brands. It’s kind of a mirror into brand equity, brand performance, brand reputation. The question is, to what extent will the brands proactively manage it or seek to amplify it?

The big takeaway here is the need for rigor and discipline in social media marketing. That’s what clients like Nestlé who spend tens of millions on social media marketing demand and deserve.

Previously on AdPulp: Brand Babble Is Social Media Pollution

The post Understanding Online Behavior Is The Screw That Tightens SMM Strategies appeared first on AdPulp.

The social-networking service said in its stock filing that more than three-quarters of its recent users are outside the United States.

We need to develop a pH test for brand content in social streams.

Short of this chemistry set solution, we can listen to Mike Proulx, senior vice president and director of social media at Hill Holliday. Here are some nuggets from his Ad Age spotlight on the preponderance of brand babble in social channels.

Today the hope and belief that brands would connect with people has in large part given way to brands publishing to them by hijacking social buzz.

Driven by the myopic goal of increasing engagement, many brands are unscrupulously on the hunt for likes, shares, followers and retweets without an overarching strategy based on core business objectives. This blind yearning for social currency is leading to incredibly irrelevant and unavailing branded content (a.k.a. advertising) that’s preying on social media.

Phrases like “hijacking social buzz” and “preying on social media” make me wince a bit. Social media isn’t a more precious form of media. However, when Proulx suggests “this blind yearning for social currency is leading to incredibly irrelevant and unavailing branded content (a.k.a. advertising),” I say “Amen.”

The trick with digital is the always-on nature of possibility. A brand can make light of topics in the news, in effort to seem human, relevant and available. However, the same brand can just as easily appear flat and out of touch.

Let’s look at a few samples from this morning on Twitter. If you will, please use our comments here to grade these brand-generated Tweets:

1)

You can look at where you've come from. We'd rather look to where we're going. #TryingStuff http://t.co/hJwTjAf6sR pic.twitter.com/aqyES4MrrP

— Columbia Sportswear (@Columbia1938) October 3, 2013

2)

#DidYouKnow Intel has over 200 programs in 70+ countries fostering digital literacy and #STEM? http://t.co/zwR17cUMEM

— IntelInvolved (@Intelinvolved) October 2, 2013

3)

The Beercade consists of 2 buttons and a joystick, a rustic throwback #CreateTech

— 4A's (@4As) October 3, 2013

4)

Bye bye car, hello weight set. See these home garages creatively transformed into workout studios, bedrooms & more. http://t.co/UmDnADqBPH

— Redfin (@Redfin) October 3, 2013

5)

Clay oven roasted lamb leg, spinach, grilled peppers, fennel-fatali pepper purée http://t.co/h46rOdpYk9

— Wildwood Restaurant (@wildwoodpdx) October 3, 2013

6)

It’s Name Your Car Day! What is your car’s name?

— State Farm (@StateFarm) October 2, 2013

The post Brand Babble Is Social Media Pollution appeared first on AdPulp.

Back in August, we covered RPA’s “spokescrumbs” campaign for the Honda Odyssey, featuring the voices of Neil Patrick Harris and Rainn Wilson.

Now Honda and RPA have extended their “spokescrumbs” campaign to Honda’s Twitter page, engaging a bunch of other brands in the process. The gist of the campaign extension is Honda tweeting popular snack companies and other brands, letting them know their crumbs will soon be vanquished by the Odyssey’s built-in vacuum cleaner. They dubbed the campaign “Odyssey’s Day of Reckoning.” Eighteen brands engaged in conversation, including Popsecret, Red Vines, Taco Bell, Eat24, Oreoe, Chips Ahoy, Lay’s and others. The engagement with Taco Bell was the highlight, featuring a fake mini-feud. Honda’s followers seemed to enjoy the banter, with some suggesting brands that Honda then reached out to. Several brands also engaged Honda without prompt, certainly a sign that they were doing something right.

It got a little cheesy and repetitive at times, but “Odyssey’s Day of Reckoning” made a lot of sense for a social campaign extension, one that succeeded in engaging fans and other brands. It solidifies the built-in vacuum cleaner as the selling point of the Odyssey, the only strong point of the weak “spokescrumbs” TV spots. Maybe Honda can follow up and make the reckoning last for more than one day. There are certainly more brands out there that would fit the concept.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Social selling is the focus of my new feature for The Content Strategist. I describe social selling in the article as the practice of leveraging social networks to enhance lead generation and boost conversions.

The point of the piece is to help determine content’s role in the sales process. We already know how content is the centerpiece of marketing campaigns, but how do sales teams leverage content to gain a competitive advantage?

For a good answer to this increasingly common question, I turned to Jill Rowley, social selling evangelist at Oracle.

“Content is the currency of the modern sales organization,” she says.

Rowley is currently busy educating 23,000 salespeople at Oracle on how to prospect and engage leads via social media channels. “The goal is to socially surround the buyer in a buyersphere of influence.”

We can make OPP (other people popular) by using OPC (other people’s content), she suggests.

I also spoke to a marketing director none too keen on the idea of using Twitter or Facebook for social selling.

Andy Tretiak, chief marketing officer for Sporting Kansas City, said, “We’ve put a large stake in brand and the last thing we want to do now is turn people off with the sales machine.”

Yet, clearly there is a time and place for social selling. For instance, if I turn to you now and suggest that you consider hiring Shawn, Dan, Wade or me to make ads for you, I am selling our services in this extremely content-rich environment of our own making.

And content’s role is clear here: it’s the price we pay to get on your radar and open doors to larger conversations.

Have you ever considered what the makers of AdPulp might help you achieve? Let me throw an idea your way. We research and write cogent articles everyday. You can hire us to do this for you or your clients.

After nine years on the AdPulp mic, one thing I have learned is the need to make a clear path from our offerings here to paid work. We continue to seek sponsors to fund the site, but the best way to support AdPulp is to work with us behind the scenes on a key project, or senior staffing need.

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