Dominos President apologized for video prank – media curve
February 25th, 2010
The story of how 2 Dominos employees with a video camera and internet connection caused severe damage to the Domino’s brand last year is all too familiar to us in the food and hospitality industry. If you have not seen the video, here it is for your reference.
The tragedy here is that Domino’s did not actively monitor social media activities nor once they found out, respond to this prank immediately. By the third day, it was too late to put out this viral fire and its fate of becoming a “what-not-to-do” example was inevitable.
The real come back story is how Partick Doyle, President of Domino’s USA, responded to this incident with his sincere apology. His sincerity was measured by Mediacurves.com, the technology responsible for charting and overlaying “believability” curve on his video. As you will see from his video, people responded well to his pledge for stricter hiring practices and higher sanitization standards.
The process of regaining customer’s trust is a tough one, especially having gone through fiascos like Dominos, Burger King and KFC. Businesses in the consumer goods sector can’t afford not to spend resources to monitor their mentions in social media as it evolves to become an influential and viral channel.
Get set, All-You-Can-Jet
December 10th, 2009
After Woody, TGI Friday’s Facebook icon, proved that is possible gather nearly 1 million fans in months time, Jet Blue is flexing its muscle on Facebook with all-you-can-fly 1 year travel pass. With just short of 65,000 FB fans but over 1.5 million Twitter, Jet Blue is positioning itself for Facebook fan inflation. Prizes include:
- 8 weekly drawings for a pair of round trip flights
- Team Prize – One Jet Blue Getaway for Four
- Grand Prize – All-You-Can-Jet Pass for One Year
In addition, for every quarter million fans JetBlue gets on Facebook by Jan 31, 2010, they’ll add another Grand Prize of a one year pass. So probability of winning Grand prize is at best 4/750,000. Well, I guess the odds are still good considering the cost to enter is free.
Team prize is 4 round-trip tickets. Registration requires using Jet Blue’s Facebook application to invite 3 friends to join. If you don’t have a team, you can join others.
Given all the new Facebook changes in 2010, brands are hurrying to acquire more fans on facebook before it gets harder and more expensive. If you still don’t have a fan page on Facebook, you gotta hurry!
Desperately trying to differentiate – Dell’s social marketing results
December 8th, 2009
PC business is becoming a commodity, price wars, razor thin margins are what you hear about when it comes to industry discussion.
Dell being a 61 billion dollar company is desperately trying to differentiate themselves in another front – providing top notch customer service.
Here’s are Dell’s new numbers:
- 30+ dedicated accounts on Twitter answering questions and seek out brand mentions to resolve negativity.
- 23% rise in twitter followers to 1.5 million
- 6.5 million in revenue booking from twitter compare to 3 million at first half of 2009
Though Dell did not release any ROI statements, they do plan to continue investing in social media.
Facebook’s 50 most active brands
December 4th, 2009
TheBigMoney.com has just come out with the ranking of Top 50 brands that make strides in Facebook. Here are some of the metrics they considered:
- Fan numbers
- Page growth
- Update frequency
- Creativity (determined by panel of judges)
- Fan engagement/interaction
The Top 10 Brands are
1. Coca-Cola: 3,996,163 fans
2. Starbucks: 5,034,578 fans
3. Disney: 2,119,773 fans
4. Victoria’s Secret: 2,151,895 fans
5. iTunes: 2,236,306 fans
6. Vitaminwater: 1,087,153 fans
7. YouTube: 3,733,242 fans
8. Chick-fil-A: 1,221,064 fans
9. Red Bull: 1,623,102 fans
10. T.G.I. Friday’s: 974,192 fans – Friends of Woody really gave them the boost
For the rest, please visit http://www.thebigmoney.com/slideshow/big-money-facebook-50-0
Coke Zero – finding your twin in the world of Facebook
December 3rd, 2009
Remember when Burger King came out with an early Facebook application that seemingly has nothing to do with their brand? The sacrificial application was it? The stunt was eventually shut down by Facebook but it’s legacy remains and free PR continues. Now Coke is bringing novelty and irrelevance to Facebook as well. To find your own twin in the world of Facebook just go to http://apps.facebook.com/facialprofiler/ and upload your photo.
The smart social marketing technique here for brand marketers is that now they have access to my actual profile to use that for market research and future product marketing initiatives. Granted I still limited the amount of info I share but how many Facebook users actually fiddle with their default privacy settings?
Upcoming Facebook changes that will help smart companies market better
December 3rd, 2009
Facebook Development Roadmap was just released yesterday, Dec 2, 2009. These updates are building 2010 to become a pivotal year for social marketing.
Here are the 5 Facebook changes that brand marketers must prepare for:
- Email - Formally hidden, Facebook will provide developer access to user’s email address upon consent. This is HUGE if you’re an email marketer
- Notification - App-to-user and user-to-user notification will be replaced by using news stream, inbox and email. This means you cannot count on status updates to always show up on your fan’s page. Brand marketers should consider asking for email addresses to market your products and services.
- Status Updates – Facebook will determine what status updates are relevant to your news feed. Similar to above, if you’re a brand marketer, go for email to ensure your messages reach your target audience.
- Counter - Facebook’s way of measuring word-of-mouth. Two billion pieces of content are shared every week, brand marketers will not only measure their reach but also avoid sending duplicate messages.
- Open Graph API – This is the most important update for brand marketers. Every web page will soon potentially be a Facebook fan page. These “Fanned” pages will show up in user’s FB profiles and in search results and that page will be able to publish stories to the stream of its fans.
Facebook’s 2010 roll-outs proves that they are listening to users and brands. Expect these changes to help smart companies capitalize on the movement from anonymous web to socially connected web.
Online Community Rules from the thought leader Tamar Weinberg
November 25th, 2009
Video compiled by Steve Cunningham at http://www.polarunlimited.com
Summary:
- First 10 years of the internet is getting all the computers and devices on it, the next 10 years is getting people connected to it
- New Community Rules. Practical Steps
Step 1
10 things you should be monitoring according to Andy Beal:
- your name
- your company – include legacy name and abbreviations
- your products/brand – manage crisis and promote positive comments
- your executives – Bernie Madoff example
- your company spokes people
- your slogan and marketing message
- your competition
- your business partners and suppliers – constant, never ending background check
- your industry
- you clients – call them to congratulate them on their latest big news, makes huge difference in retention rate
Step 2: to blog or not to blog
6 technique Tamar suggests:
- Use imagery, icons, charts to get your point across
- Keep it clean and to the point. People scan, not read.
- Link to appropriate sources; give credit where credit is due
- Provide reader-friendly lists (like this one!)
- Use interviews (interview of Tamar Weinberg at the end of video)
- Use regular features like “Ask us Session”,
Bonus 1: Listen to your readers
Bonus 2: Submit your blog to directories
Step 3: Getting your content found
- Send your links out on twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook et. al. Don’t be too heavy on self promotion
- Answer questions on Yahoo Answers and LinkedIN
- Get content on social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, stumpleupon
- Get on social news sites like Reddit and Digg. Tamar will show you how to get there in her book – “The New Community Rules“
Monetizing the web – do it like QQ
November 17th, 2009
So what makes Tencent so successful? Let’s see where their revenue comes from:
Revenues from IVAS were RMB 2.15 billion (USD 315.7 million), an increase of 13.2% QoQ or an increase of 107.9% YoY
Revenues from MVAS were RMB 470.0 million (USD 68.8 million), an increase of 6.9% QoQ or an increase of 38.9% YoY
Revenues from online advertising were RMB 243.0 million (USD 35.6 million), an increase of 65.8% QoQ or an increase of 9.1% YoY
IVAS = Internet value-added service
MVAS = Mobile & telecommunication value-added service
By far the cash cow here is IVAS, internet value-added service. It’s these
Qzone gets about 4 million users to upload 60 million photos every day; it is interactive and it concentrates on peer to peer interaction to leverage social media for its success
VIP.QQ.com – exclusive club for early QQ privileges, sneak preview of new product & services + experiences.
QQ Show – Avatar system for dressing up online avatar. Like Cyworld, users shop for virtual clothing, hairstyles, and accessories with virtual currency to display on their QQ chat window, chat room, community and Qzone
QQ Music – leading online music service in China
QQ Live – leading online video service in China
Yes, just these 5 services are responsible for $315.7 million. If this remotely surprises you, let me explain why it works.
QQ’s secret of success lies in massive volumes of micro transactions. For example, QQ Show lets people play dress up of their online persona and help individuals stand out from the rest. Now, you may think being different in China isn’t a such a popular thing to do because the culture is more homogeneous. However, this is where the population and anthropology study can explain the cultural phenomenon.
In such a large population at 1.3 billion, the majority of Chinese is asked to conform from early age by the government advocating the collective rather than the individual. This drives the barrier and cost to stand out higher whether it’s piano lessons, English & Math lessons or sports lessons, parents must be able to afford them if they want their only child to stand out to employers who naturally prefer employees with more skill sets. How does it all relate? Well, the cost to stand out is traditionally higher but now come QQ, offering people the opportunity to stand out at fractions on a dollar, appealing to the masses. You may argue standing out on the internet with a cool avatar isn’t the same as having the skills to say, code in Java, but with millions yearning to stand out in ways driven by a population and culture, somehow, purchasing virtual goods to be different is equated to vanity like carrying a Starbucks beverage. The point is, modern Chinese now rush at every channel to become different, to stand out, because they think that’s how they get ahead in life or induce praise or jealousy. Sure, there’s still the fun factor involved, but evidently it’s more beneficial than fun in China.