It's becoming increasingly clear to me that the people who buy and sell online media just don't get social networking.
The problem with most media buys on Facebook and MySpace is that they're based on an old model - buying targeted impressions. But on social networks like Facebook the real value to be captured is not a view or a click - it's tapping into social interactions.
At the end of the day Facebook and MySpace have hundreds of millions of impressions to sell. But impressions are a commodity. Social interactions are scarce.
Too many ads on Facebook address me as an individual, not me as part of a constantly connected group of people that are interacting based on shared interests. The real value of Facebook is in tapping into the group connections that people make through sponsored groups, profile pages, and native apps.
The problem is that buying targeted CPM on social networks is easy. But it's also lazy. And at the end of the day it leaves most of the value on the table.
Right now brands don't know enough themselves about places like Facebook to challenge their media agencies. We hope to actively change that. The more they learn, the more the agencies will have to adapt. But as of right now it's clear that the media agencies are not moving fast enough.
If you're looking for an example of a mainstream media company that has "done it right" on Facebook, look no further than the New York Times.
Earlier this week The Times launched "The New York Times News Quiz", a native Facebook app that each day presents a short, five question, quiz with each of the questions based on news stories that are running that day in The New York Times and found on the NYT website.
The New York Times quiz app is by far the best use of Facebook that I've seen a major news organization launch to date.
Creating a quiz around news headlines is not something new for a media organization like The New York Times. They've been doing it for years. The benefit of the news quiz format for a publisher like the Times is that it can connect the questions to specific articles, photos, and videos that are found on The New York Times website. This increases loyalty, page views, and, ultimately, advertising sales.
But the key advantage that the Facebook platform provides The New York Times is the ability to leverage Facebook's users in such a way that the quiz is turned into an ongoing challenge amongst friends such that the results from Facebook users who are taking the quiz are automatically matched and ranked each day against the scores of their friends. By integrating the quiz into Facebook, The Times doesn't need to build any of the expensive back-end systems that would connect players together in a challange on a website. They get it for free by using Facebook. In addition they also leverage Facebook's userbase of 35 million people, as well as the News Feed, Facebook's built in viral marketing tool.
What I like most about the New York Times News Quiz on Facebook is that it re-thinks and re-works something that already exists in a new and unique format.
All-in-all, a very smart move by The New York Times.
As a marketer, one of the aspects of Facebook that I'm currently obsessed with is the whole concept of digital gifting.
Facebook launched digital gifts earlier this year and by all accounts it's been a huge success for them. Personally, I think it's brilliant.
In addition to Facebook's own gifting ap, five of the most popular user-created aps on Facebook are all gifting aps. This indicates that digital gifting is not only a great concept, but also something that people like and want.
This morning I noticed that Facebook has integrated sponsorship for the first time into their digital gift system.
Today's new gift on Facebook is Skittles gum, a new product from Masterfoods.
Skittles and Facebook are extremely smart in how they did this. By making the gift a "limited edition" with only 250,000 available, the whole concept of scarcity is injected into a world where scarcity doesn't even exist.
You may ask yourself why in the world would Facebook limit the number of Skittles Gum "gifts", when the gift itself is nothing more than a stupid jpeg?
Because people want to feel like they are getting something that not everybody has, even if it's digital and, in the case of digital gifts, even if it's nothing more than a stupid jpeg.
People want to be part of something that they think is special. If everyone has it, then it's not special. Limiting something, even if it is digital, creates scarcity. Again, scarcity one of the most important driver of most retail sales. If everyone has it, I don't want it. But if only the people who I want to identify with have it, then I want it too.
So not only did Skittles launch the gift today, but they connected it with a Sponsored Skittles group on Facebook. Currently there are now over 5,000 members (myself included) So while this doesn't sound like a huge number, because each member will be passionate about the product and drive word-of-mouth on a new product, it not only has the potential to move the needle on sales, but will move the needle on sales. From experience, I can almost guarantee it.
The best thing about this promotion:
Who the hell doesn't love Skittles?
It's because Skittles developed a great brand and a great product before they went on Facebook, and because they're using Facebook in a manner that goes beyond merely buying an ad, they have the potential for huge success.
Today, every smart digital marketer on the planet is trying to figure out how to exist and thrive within fast growing social networks like Facebook.
At it's most fundamental level, the key to success for brands within social networks is actually quite simple:
Brands need to learn how to share better.
Let me re-phrase that a bit:
To be successful and thrive within social networks, brands need to learn how to produce content that people actually (and actively) want to share.
In recent weeks, as Facebook increasingly takes on the role of a dominant player on the web, the spotlight is finally starting to shine on the word "Share".
On Facebook the word "share" is everywhere.
For a long time, "Send To A Friend" was a common feature incorporated and used by marketers to encourage viral distribution of content.
But the phrase - "Send To A Friend" - implies a strictly one-way value proposition. "Sending" and "Adding" are "me to you" not "me with you". Sharing is very different.
The act of a person sharing something on Facebook with a group of people close to them is the single action that drives awareness and viral distribution.
To be successful on Facebook, not only do brands need to learn how to share with others, but they need to learn why and how people share what you give them amongst themselves. Because of this, the most effective marketers on the web are those that act as cultural anthropologists.
By definition, sharing means that the owner is
willing to divide and give up part of the whole so that other people
can contribute to it and benefit.
The best brands not only understand this, they do it.
Sharing implies that there must be mutual value in the transfer of the information or object. The person who is receiving something needs to want it as much as the person wants to give it to him. If they don't trulty want what is being shared, there's no value in the transaction.
For brands, understanding the concept of sharing means truly putting the focus back on value.
So what do people not only like to share, but actively want to share?
First, they want to share information that is new, fresh, relevant, and something that other people might not yet know.
Finally, they want to share things that are creative, unique, and that which inspires them.
What don't they want to share?
They don't want to share things that are commodities. People like to share things that are unique.
People don't want to share things that they perceive as
being pushed and sold to them without any concern or understanding of who they are and what they care about.
This brings me to what agencies like to call "viral videos": Viral videos are those seemingly edgy and funn video spots created specifically for the web that are intended to be passed from person-to-person rather than supported with media buying.
As a digital marketer, I'm not a big fan of creating viral videos.
The reason for this is that the manner in which most viral videos are being produced today is based on an old model of the web that no longer exists. For most of us, we no longer email things to our friends or chat about them in chat rooms or message boards. We no longer email anything to anyone. We simply share it on places like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, de.lico.us, Digg, and Stumble-Upon,
For me, it's very simple. There are only two types of content:
Things that people want to share and things that people don't.
So rather than creating viral videos (that most often fail because they try to hard to be "viral"), brands should be creating videos that people actively want to share.
A good example of this is the "Balls" video that Sony Bravia produced last year.
The commercial, featuring over 170,000 bouncing ball continues to be incredibly viral on the web, now over a year after it was first introduced on the net. As of this week, well over a million people have watched it on YouTube alone.
The important thing here is to realize that the most viral videos weren't conceived to be viral. They were conceived to be good.
I don't think that Sony ever set out to make a "viral video" when they came up with the balls concept. That's not to say that they didn't think that it would "go viral" on the web. The Sony Bravia ad succeeds on the web because of a very basic principle:
If you inspire me, I will want to share it with others.
Sony didn't try force the issue with the Bravia ads. Nor did they attempt to deceive anyone, as most viral videos do. Sony simply created a great ad that had the fundamental elements of "sharing" in its DNA.
So how do you create successful sharable ads and promotions?
Today, brands should ask themselves the following questions:
First...
Is what we are putting on the web even sharable? Can people easily place it on their Facebook profile or blog? Is it embeddable? Or is it fixed and locked on our website in such a way that people can't share it with their friends even if they want to?
Second...
Do the things in the ad or promotion that we want people to talk about hold up to the "share test"? Is it information that is new and fresh that people will want to talk about? Is what we are giving them inspiring?
The way I see it is very simple. Blogs and social networks like Facebook are built on the principle of sharing.
Those who will succeed in social media will be the ones who make sharing the heart of everything they do.
The other day I wrote about how the film Good Luck Chuck was being marketed on Facebook, and how Lionsgate Studios missed a huge opportunity by not taking advantage of any of the benefits that the Facebook platform offers marketers.
So if Lionsgate doesn't yet "get" Facebook, who does?
New Line.
New Line is being extremely smart in how they are using Facebook to market their upcoming R-Rated film Shoot 'Em Up.
This afternoon the following sponsored ad appeared in my News Feed:
Intrigued by the "See an R-Rated Preview" call-to-action , I clicked on the link was taken to the following sponsored page on Facebook. There I watched the R-Rated trailer.
Okay, so why is any of this significant to marketers? All it is is an ad that links to a trailer. Big deal.
Here's why it's a big deal. The MPAA doesn't allow film marketers to show R-Rated content on the web without verification from the person viewing it that they are at least 17 years old. New Line is the first company that I've seen that is leveraging a benefit built into the DNA of the Facebook platform. It's a benefit that makes marketing R-rated content on Facebook a fantastic idea.
Why?
Because it's a better experience for the user.
Because Facebook already knows that I am at least 17 years old (I told them this when I set up my profile months ago) marketers can now target R-Rated ads and content at people like me without me having to fill out my name, age, and agree that I am at least 17 years old before I see it.
This may not seem like a big deal to some, but it's a C-change difference in how film content is marketed on the web.
Here's what I get when I try to watch the same exact trailer on the Shoot 'Em Up website:
So not only is my user experience better on Facebook then on the web, marketing R-Rated content on Facebook is also a smart business move for New Line when it comes to how they are spending their money. On Facebook, there is zero waste in New Line's media buy. Hard to argue with that.
The other day I wrote: "Facebook has the ability to become the single most important platform for grassroots activism on the internet."
A great example of this came last week in the UK when student's in England successfully used Facebook to take on banking giant, HSBC.
For the last few weeks The National Union of Students have been using Facebook not to broadly target HSBC, but rather, to focus their anger on a very specific action taken by HSBC - the reversal of a decision to do away with interest-free overdrafts for recent college graduates in the UK.
Largely due to the growing Facebook protest, HSBC decided last week to reverse their decision and not charge students a 9.9% APR on their overdrafts. They also stated that they would be refunding interest charges collected in August.
The BBC quoted NUS vice president Wes Streeting as saying:
"There can be no doubt that using Facebook made the world of difference to our campaign. By setting up a group on a site that is incredibly
popular with students, it enabled us to contact our members during the summer vacation far more easily than would otherwise have been possible. It also meant that we could involve our former members - the graduates who were going to be most affected by this policy."
What's most interesting about how Facebook was used by the students was not that they targeted HSBC. Rather, it was that the students used Facebook to hyper-target and focus their protest on a very specific niche decision.
Why should the HSBC protest on Facebook matter to brands?
Because it signals a new trend where social networking sites like Facebook are increasingly being used not to broadly target companies like Nike or Wal-Mart, but rather to focus their protest on very niche decisions that they want reversed.
Facebook has the ability to become the single most important platform for grassroots activism on the internet.
This is something that should not go unnoticed.
As the web gets more social, and the individual consumer's voice becomes increasingly amplified, the key to success for brands will come not only from how well they market themselves online, but from how well they manage their online reputations.
If someone shares an opinion on Facebook, that opinion has the ability to grow and gain importance as it becomes inter-connected and amplified throughout the Facebook ecosystem. Facebook gives users all the tools they need to not only create a community around a cause or issue that they are passionate about, but also the tools to grow and intensify the message as well.
At electricArtists, we've been spending a lot of time developing strategies around reputation management and how brands can establish and increase their online influence. It's clear that when it comes to understanding and developing your online reputation, fully understanding how Facebook works is going to be crucial.
For brands entering Facebook, the most important thing is to know what you're getting into.
A good place to start is Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart, to nobody's surprise, recently learned the hard way the ins-and-outs of how Facebook works. Last month the retailer launched a Back-To-School promotion on Facebook that quickly garnered them attention for embracing social media.
Karen Burk, a Wal-Mart spokesperson was quoted as saying:
"We realize that this is an audience that we need to be talking to, and that this is a channel we need to be on”
But what actually happened to Wal-Mart on Facebook was not as positive as reported in the mainstream media.
Wal-Mart's "Roommate Match" promotion was almost immediately hijacked after it launched. Facebook users quickly turned the promotion into a forum and platform for public opposition to the company's predatory business practices. Currently almost 100% of the 390 comments on the promotion's message board take the company to task for their social policies. Almost none of them engage in any sort of discussion around the promotion itself.
Wal-Mart's entry into Facebook has quickly taught them that "being on" Facebook is not a one-way dialog as they would like it to be.
The problem for Wal-Mart goes back to Karen Burk's quote.
On the social web, it's not about talking to consumers. That's what you do in print and on television. It's about talking with consumers.
For brands like Wal-Mart, the goal shouldn't be to "be on" Facebook. Rather it should be to create something that is engaging and contributing to the community that is inside Facebook.
There's a big difference.
It's important to remember that Facebook is a platform, not a place.
So, what should Wal-Mart have done differently?
They should never have done it in the first place.
What Wal-Mart should be doing is spending less time thinking about promotions that can sell a college student another notebook, and more time thinking about how to better their online reputation.
On Facebook, people's bullshit meter is set at 11.
Sometimes when the clients says: "We need to be on Facebook. Now", the answer should be:
"Given the circumstances, I'm not so sure that would be a good idea."
Yesterday, Facebook made a very smart adjustment in how they rank the most popular apps in their user directory.
Now, rather than rank the most popular apps based on the total number of people who have added them to their personal pages, Facebook is ranking the apps based on the total level of user engagement of that specific app each day.
So how does Facebook calculate engagement?
Facebook is defining engagement as "the number of users who
touch your application every day (measured from midnight to midnight). The touch points are: Canvas Page Views, Link Clicks in FBML, Mock-Ajax Form Submission, Click-to-Play Flash"
It's these seemingly little things that Facebook does that continues to impress me. Moving away from putting the emphasis on installs, and shifting the focus to actual interactions means that developers can't hide behind deceiving numbers.
At electricArtists we currently don't do any media buying for our clients, although some people say that we should.
Maybe one day we will, but right now there are two reasons why media buying as a business doesn't interest me all that much.
First, as a business owner I'm not crazy about the idea of building a business on something that's almost entirely based on fixed margins.
Second, all too often media buying leaves too many good opportunities on the table because on the whole, it's not very creative.
So that I don't get pummeled by all of the people who I respect and admire that buy and sell media, I should clarify by saying that I think media buying can be creative and sometimes it is. It's just that too often, it's not. And because it's not very creative, it's also often not very strategic as well. I'm a fan of media buying when it is used to it's fullest. But too often, media buyers can be lazy.
Here's a prime example:
Tonight in my Facebook News Feed I noticed the following sponsored ad for an upcoming movie called Good Luck Chuck.
Here's the ad:
The ad then links to a sponsored page on Facebook that looks like this:
So here's my problem with it:
It's a huge missed opportunity.
It took me two seconds to realize that this deal was most likely done between a relatively uninformed buyer who doesn't yet understand Facebook and most likely a relatively lazy seller who never explained how Facebook actually works and how to maximize it if you are going to purchase it.
At a minimum the studio paid a quarter of a million dollars for this media buy. And with the ad buy they received a sponsored page on Facebook as part of the deal. (If they had purchased banner ads it would have linked to the film's official website but because they paid a premium to be added to the News Feed, they got a sponsored page)
So what's wrong with the page?
For me, everything.
First, the page has nothing to do with Facebook and leverages absolutely zero of Facebook's platform. All of the features on the page link out to the web with not one element of the page leveraging any of the things that Facebook charges a premium for.
Here a quick run down of all the "cool" things you can do on the Good Luck Chuck Facebook page.
You can send your friend "a kiss".
Over email.
You can send your friend a Good Luck Chuck e-card.
Again. Over email.
You can add a Good Luck Chuck icon to your profile.
To your AOL IM profile, Not Facebook. You can download Good Luck Chuck wallpaper.
To your computer desktop.
There's not one thing on the page that has anything to do with Facebook other than adding the obligatory user comments (which currently show an equal amount of negative comments to good ones),
But for less than $20,000 more, the studio could have developed a suite of terrific Facebook native apps that would have linked fans together, created ongoing buzz on Facebook, and developed a widespread presence on users profile pages. All of these things would have increased in value over time leading up to opening weekend. That extra time and effort to create something that was not only good, but native to Facebook, could have made the six figure ad buy worth a whole lot more than just another set of impressions to add to the media plan.
There's one thing that the ad buy did achieve though. It allowed the media buyer to tell the client with a smile:
"Hey, you're on Facebook"
It let them check off a box on their media plan.
For me, media buying on Facebook not only has it's place and it's value, it's also something that we recommend to our clients. Media buying allows you to reach people that viral distribution won't. But for me, it should be done in a manner that takes into account (a) where it is paced and (b) who it is that it's reaching.
In the last couple of weeks, I've learned that developing applications for Facebook is very different then developing for any of the other platforms. There are certain things that are inherently a part of Facebook's "DNA" that, when leveraged properly, can be be the determining factor between success and failure.
Here are my top five things to remember when developing applications for Facebook:
MAKE SHARING THE HEART OF THE APPLICATION. Go beyond merely encouraging users to share the app with their friends. Instead, make "sharing" and "gifting" the central core to the application itself. Build sharing into the DNA of the app and make sure that it is a requirement during the ideation process.
DON'T FORGET TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ALL THE DATA THAT FACEBOOK COLLECTS FROM USERS. For a marketer, the cool thing about Facebook is that you can tap into all of the information that Facebook collects from users in their profiles. The best apps are those that fully leverage user data so that the app delivers customized and relevant content.
KEEP THE ENGAGEMENT WITH EACH USER OPEN-ENDED AND ONGOING. There shouldn't be an"end" to the app. The best applications on Facebook are those that are dynamic and constantly changing and evolving based not just on your interactions with it, but also those of your friends and connections. Challenges work extremely well on Facebook because they keep the application dynamic and constantly evolving.
RESIST OVER-BRANDING. Success on Facebook can only come if people want you on their profile page. Remember that you are a guest and a visitor. Unlike a banner ad, the user can kick you off any time they like. Create apps that fit into a users profile page as if it's natural to be there. If you act like you are trying to "invade" the page, you are doomed for failure.
KEEP THE TONALITY PERSONAL AND RELEVANT. Because Facebook profiles are only visable to those who the user wants to share their information with, communication on Facebook is extremely intimate and personal. The best apps are those that connect with the user on a personal level. Keep the tonality personal, relevant, and low-key.
It's becoming increasingly clear to me that the people who buy and sell online media just don't get social networking. 
As a marketer, one of the aspects of Facebook that I'm currently obsessed with is the whole concept of digital gifting. 
