Olympic-size tactical thinking

Photo Credit: Reuters/ Lewis Whyld/Pool

I recently facilitated a tactical ideation workshop in which we applied “Olympic” thinking to the client’s media planning.

Digital media spending by London 2012 Olympics sponsors amounted to as much as 20% of budgets.

Digital outlets attracted funds that might have gone to television in prior years.

And while ad agency and brand representatives don’t provide budgets or spending estimates for their Olympic campaigns, it’s believed that a comprehensive multimedia Olympic campaign cost between $30 million to $50 million.

The pricetag was worth it, most brand executives said, because they believe they were able to weave tighter connections between their brands and target customers during the Olympics compared to other events.

Here are some of the media ideas inspired by our Olympic-size thinking:

 

3x Strategy for getting more from ‘social’

Last month, I was invited to speak at the annual meeting of the Endurance Sports Media Group in Orlando.

The topic of my ESMG talk was  “Getting more from ‘social’ for your endurance media brand.”   

My goal was to offer practical ways to connect, engage, and interact more with their readers.

 To connect more, we reviewed the social channels, profiles, and how the publications were using them already.

• Facebook
• Twitter                       
• Google +
• Pinterest
• YouTube            
• Tumblr
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

We also determined their baseline Klout scores as one metric of current connections.

As we moved to engagement, I posed the question: “why you want to use social media?”

The current data on engagement shows that social media is:

• Not an end, but a means
• Not something “monetize”, but a way to increase value
• Not something you charge for, but a way to get more people to pay for what you sell

We reviewed examples they referenced as other publications doing social well.  Plus, we discussed examples of personalized brand experiences.

Then, I highlighted what I believed to be their biggest asset = Content

And we got very specific with a social strategy: Leverage Content by 3’s

To move forward, you should choose 3 channels

• one to focus on                       
• one to pilot
• one to observe and learn

Next, feature your content 3 times per day, and leverage partner content 3 times per week.

When you execute this, you can evaluate against a goal of 3 times  the followers.  Finally, you should set a goal to refine after 3 months.

61 "Likes" and counting for the Passion Pit tix

In what looks more like a Big Ten football score, Melanie really lit up the Facebook tally in a contest for concert tickets from Seek Creative Distortion.

5 C’s of "discover" -- and how social media monitoring is applied

On Monday, I posted an article on my agency blog on tools to analyze the social media environment.

I shared some details on the social insights listening methods we can use in each of the 5C’s:

1.  Category – Document the language used by customers to describe the class, mechanisms of disease, modes of action, and the dynamics of care.  Capture both the words and visuals found throughout social media.  Analyze the frequency of use, as well as the context.
2.  Competition – Audit competitive online promotions.  Moreover, verify customers’ positives responses or negative reactions (using social media monitoring tools, such as Atlerian SM2 and Scoutlabs).
3.  Clinical – Compare and contrast how audiences are talking on social platforms.  Uncover opportunities for message clarity about the disease and treatment options.  Monitor products in the pipeline through social reaction to press releases, clinical trial updates, and investor communication.
4.  Customer – Evaluate forums where like-minded physicians are gathering or patients with similar conditions are interacting.  Identify channels for community management, content planning, and media engagement. Target the diverse stakeholders who are potentially impacting information and decisions of the customers.
5.  Culture – Assess social exchanges in broader cultural contexts, such as payer environments, practice settings, legal controversies, or patient advocacy positions.

Read more about this, along with a recent example of this kind of listening, on the "Brand Liberator" blog at GSW Worldwide.

6 research tools we’ve used lately to leverage social media in Discover stage

 Earlier this week, I posted a blog for my agency on ways to use social media to LISTEN, not just share.

At the heart of an account planner’s role is the ability to listen to what customers knows about a brand, how they feel about it, and how they use it.

That’s why we always have looked for new and better techniques to understand what they like, what they say to their friends, what they associate the brand with, and how they experience the brand – all in hopes of moving toward brand loyalty.

No wonder social media insight is proving such a powerful qualitative research modality.

Today, account planners can observe and learn from online communities by following the real-world conversations that take place there. Through networks (LinkedIn, Facebook), blogs, forums (WebMD, PatientsLikeMe), bookmarking (StumbleUpon, del.icio.us), podcasts, visual content communities (Flickr, Pinterest, YouTube), and micro-blogs (Twitter), we can construct a more complete picture of how a brand fits into a customer’s life.

In addition social conversations already taking place, we can use social media platforms to create our own source of customer research. Here are just a few tools we’ve used lately in our Discover stage with clients:

1. Online focus groups
2. Webcam one-on-one interviews
3. Content monitoring services and text analysis software
4. Keyword search analysis
5. SEO and linking research
6. Brand story and concept evaluation surveys

Read more by clicking on the "Brand Liberator" blog post at GSW Worldwide

10 examples of US healthcare going viral with social networks

US innovators are finding ways to use social networks to improve healthcare, despite a variety of challenges.  

Writer Danny Bradbury of the UK newspaper, The Guardian, offers a number of familiar examples -- along with a few I was did not know.

Social media offers a focused channel for special interest groups to communicate – and those in the healthcare sector are among them. "Health is social," says Phil Baumann, founder of a US consulting firm with the same name that advises healthcare institutions on the use of social networks. He argues that healthcare is better when people can connect to share information and experiences. "Any media, any technologies that enable those connections and encourage collaboration will only lead to a better healthcare system."

Unfortunately, healthcare facilities could be using social media a lot more. A report by consultancy Deloitte on social networks in healthcare found that the sector ranked third last in terms of social network use, beating only pharmaceutical makers and that bastion of collaborative digital media petroleum refining. Although half of the healthcare companies in the Fortune 100 are on Twitter, none are official users of Facebook or blogs, according to Deloitte.  The article lists some of the challenges faced.  Read it at http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcare-network

Here’s a list of 10 social networks in US healthcare:

1.     Sermo - an online network exclusive to physicians.

2.     PatientsLikeMe - a social network enabling patients to share experiences and advice.

3.     CureTogether - millions of ratings comparing the real-world performance of treatments for hundreds of conditions.

4.     DailyStrength - social network of support groups for various ailments, from alcoholism to infertility.

5.     FacetoFace Health - this social network connects patients with similar ailments, enabling them to share their experiences.

6.     MedHelp - health management network and online support community.

7.     Ozmosis - social network for physicians, including a cloud-based social collaboration and clinical content management platform.

8.     RadRounds - a professional network for radiologists that also includes the ability to share and discuss interesting medical imaging cases.

9.     WebMD - part social network, part portal, this site provides insights and information about health issues.

10.  WEGO Health - a social network which aims to empower health activists and leaders.

360-degree communications theme for DuPont: "a global collaboratory"

Earlier this year, DuPont named Scott Coleman VP-chief marketing and sales officer, succeeding Cynthia Green, who retired from the position in January after a 31-year career at DuPont. Coleman joined DuPont from energy company Dresser Inc., where he served as senior VP-marketing.


He was interviewed by Kate Maddox of trade journal BtoB.

Coleman discussed his marketing vision for DuPont and how he plans to execute it.

BtoB: What are your goals as chief marketing and sales officer at DuPont?

Coleman: One of the bigger ones is helping to transform the image of DuPont from what I think has been that, in recent history, of predominantly a chemical company to what it is today, which is a science company. Any time you have a company that's been around for 200-plus years, it has had to adapt and change over time. We are at that adaptive, critical changing point for DuPont. In recent history, I think most people still believe it's a chemical company. If you go back just a few years ago, the vast majority of the company—80% to 90%—was a chemical company, and today less than one-third of the company is a chemical company. It has changed to a science company—everything from seeds to photovoltaic [solar power] to renewable materials. It truly is a science-based company in a lot of different areas today.

BtoB: How will you execute that?

Coleman: One of the things is we will be launching a 360-degree communications theme, and the theme is around a science company, being an inclusive innovator and being a global “collaboratory.” There is a multitude of different types of media we will be doing that with. We have a major media partner, and we'll be coming out with that announcement in the next 30 to 60 days. And there will be a bunch of different social and other types of media, which is one aspect of that. We'll be launching an internal campaign and an external campaign. The external campaign is a significant investment for DuPont. It is probably a three-to-five-times spending increase compared to what we have done in recent history. 

BtoB: Can you talk about the external campaign?

Coleman: It's a little early to talk about it. We have a major media company we've aligned with. The campaign is global in nature, and there will be social elements to it. It will not be so much of an advertising campaign where I'm doing a major media buy across the world, but there will be different types of media associated with it. We're spending a lot of the money on different social aspects as well as some online efforts.

BtoB: Is Ogilvy still your ad agency?

Coleman: Yes. There are partners. For the television spot—there's a major media property we'll be working with—that we worked with Ogilvy to form a partnership with. We can't share any more details for another 30 to 60 days.

BtoB: How will you use social media?

Coleman: The campaign will be based around this concept of us being a global collaboratory and taking our science and getting it with the right industries, the right markets and the right thought leaders to solve some of the world's most difficult problems, such as feeding the world, alternative energy, and safety and protection. One aspect of it is we are in the process of putting together some global collaboratories around the world so customers on different continents can communicate in real time with our scientists from around the world. So you could have eight different sites all coming together in a rich-media experience so that it feels like they are all in the same room, working on the same issues. We are starting to build that infrastructure out now, and it will probably take the course of two years to get it in as many spots in the world as we want. 

BtoB: Where else are you investing marketing dollars?

Coleman: If you look at the e-infrastructure of DuPont, there is a significant investment in a multiyear program that we're working on to really leverage and take advantage of the various social media-type markets. One chunk of the spend is on much richer, deeper content and being able to have platforms so, as we go out into the social world, we don't have to replicate the same content in multiple places—so we can replicate content one time and then use it on everything from a mobile platform to video vignettes across the space. Social media in and of itself doesn't cost a lot of money; but, to give someone a rich experience with a deeper understanding, we think it's important to invest in that infrastructure and platform capability.


BtoB: Will you be ramping up your people resources as well?

Coleman: In our global marketing and sales organization we have about 400 [corporate marketing and sales] people today, so there is not a significant incremental need for people. But certainly from a productivity and tools standpoint, some of the things we're putting in place will allow them to be much more productive, so we'll be able to get a lot more good content out and other things without adding a lot to head count. Now with that said, more than 60% of our business is international today, and more than 50% of our people are in the U.S. So one of the things we'll be looking to do is add marketing and sales talent that is more internationally based. We have over 600 websites around the world, and we do business in hundreds of countries. We want to be able to take this content we're developing and make it local. So we're really going to endeavor where we can to have the ability to do things in local languages—not only in written content, but in videos and other ways.


Here are some links to the work that Coleman was describing.

DuPont and Repshel Use Polymer Science to Help Build Affordable Housing in Mexico  

DuPont Helps Promote Workplace Safety In India While Being Sensitive To Cultural Change 

DuPont Food Science Uses Local Food Sources to Help Fight Malnutrition in Africa With Sibusiso  

Is chief social media officer the "zaniest human resource innovation in memory"?

This new and trendy job is a two-step process at some companies:

1. Scramble to hire social media officers.
2. Figure out what it is, exactly, that social media officers do and how to measure it.

Is it brain surgery? Well, consider that a decade ago, Natalie Malaszenko could hardly have predicted that she'd now be heading up Petco's social media practices. "This is a career path that I sort of fell into," she says. "I originally was working on a PhD in cognitive neuroscience."

552 hospital Twitter accounts: Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and more amp up marketing -- and social media

Earlier this year, Sarasota Memorial Hospital live-tweeted a kidney surgery, trading more than 1,900 tweets among followers during the procedure.

Welcome to the new front in medical marketing, writes Rich Thomaselli in a recent issue of Advertising Age.  Hospitals jockeying to position themselves for growth amid a perfect storm of aging baby boomers and a health-care-reform bill that will result in millions more insured patients down the road.

To be sure, the outlays are nowhere near the $4.5 billion in ad dollars dispensed by the direct-to-consumer drug category, but it's picking up where DTC left off as nationally known brands such as the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Massachusetts General Hospital ramp up spending.

With a combination of co-branding partnerships, reputation advertising, and an increased presence in social media, hospital and medical centers are trying to establish themselves as the go-to place for particular diseases as more patients comparison shop for treatment.

"We used to think of hospitals in terms of geography -- what's closest and how fast can I get there? Now that's not an issue," said Ned Russell, managing director of Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness. "The health-care business is developing its own destination segment."

He noted that "a lot of these national and world-class medical centers have developed their own specialties, and it's become part of their brand value. They need to attract talent and get funding. How do they do that? By increasing their patient base. How do they lure patients? Their advertising. Doesn't seem to matter these days how far away a patient is."

Indeed, 25% of the patients at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., come from 500 miles away or more. To get patients traveling, hospitals are upping the ante. The Cleveland Clinic more than doubled its ad spending from 2008 to 2009, according to Kantar Media, from $3.9 million to $8.5 million. Spending by Sarasota (Fla.) Memorial Health Care System is up 10%, and it's up 15% at Detroit's Henry Ford Health System.

The Ad Age article also includes insights on how they are using their rankings.  Many of these hospitals and medical centers have taken their awards and rankings -- particularly the annual influential U.S. News & World Report rankings -- and crafted reputation ads around them to highlight their respective specialties.

New York-based agency DeVito Verdi, for instance, created an emotional print campaign for Mass General that touted its heart and vascular center, with ads that included text such as "A mother's last words shouldn't come before her child's first." The Mayo Clinic has done the same with its transplant services, and Sloan-Kettering in New York has advertised its success in fighting cancer.

"What's happening out there and one of the things fueling all this promotion and advertising is many of them, when they talk to patients and consumers, talk in specialties," said Mike Guarini, president of Ryan TrueHealth, Wilton, Conn., and a longtime pharma ad vet who has worked on both the agency side and the drug-company side with Bristol-Myers Squibb. "I say 'refreshing soda,' you think Coca-Cola. ... I say 'cancer treatment,' you think Sloan-Kettering."

Cleveland Clinic has marketed its renowned heart care and, in fact, has a deal in place with Lowe's to serve as the home-improvement center's preferred provider for heart care. The Mayo Clinic has a similar agreement with Walmart to be the big-box retailer's provider of transplants if a Walmart employee needs one.

"We try to focus on key facts about the Cleveland Clinic," said Paul Matsen, CMO of the clinic, which started a national ad campaign earlier this year from Adworks, Washington, D.C. "So we'll run some targeted stuff about being the national leader in lung transplantations, for instance, but we've also been No. 1 for 15 consecutive years for our heart center. In July, when the new rankings come out, we'll do some new messaging as well."

Part of that messaging will most assuredly come via social media. According to the University of Maryland Medical Center's director of web strategy, Ed Bennett, hospitals have gone from having 250 Twitter accounts in May of 2009 to 552 currently, and from 250 YouTube channels to 341.

"Hospitals realize that word-of-mouth is the most significant driver you can have, so social media is an opportunity to humanize what can be a scary, complex institution," Mr. Bennett said. "I tell hospitals 'Don't get into social media because you think you're going to get more patients. Do it because you're helping be responsible to people reaching out looking for answers.' "

One of the most famous health-care facilities in the country, the 118-year-old Mayo Clinic, now has a social-media manager, Lee Aase. "Social media is the way word-of-mouth happens in the 21st century," he said. "Twitter is just one of the most powerful networking tools that I've ever seen. It enables you to make connections with people that have a common interest."

What did experts tell Ad Age about the role of health-care reform?  Social media makes sense for the category considering that potential patients are more empowered than ever to take charge of their treatment by using the web. Twitter "is an informational tool," said Mr. Matsen. "It's not replacing the web or targeted advertising, but it's a great complement. For instance, we've integrated our YouTube page onto our Facebook page and we've gotten almost 300 videos. We've also taken some of our web tools, like 'Find a Doctor' and our health- and e-newsletters and put them on our Facebook page. It's a great information hub."

Mr. Matsen, however, wasn't quite convinced that the uptick in marketing for hospitals and medical centers was completely due to the health-care reform bill, noting that "most of health-care reform will not go into place until 2014, so it's a bit premature to say it's affected our strategy."

But Gerald Kominski, professor of public health and associate director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, said, "They are chomping at the bit. [Hospitals and medical centers] that have been identified as having high-quality care at low cost, clearly they want to advertise that fact. The marketing dynamic is there."

Added Saatchi's Mr. Russell: "[Health-care reform] certainly plays a role in this. What they're doing, and rightly so, is taking the initiative to be part of the conversation that they know is happening now and will continue."

10 Reasons not to Tweet

Yesterday, I shared with you the "10 Ways to Tweet." Just as there are ways to tweet, there are also ways not to tweet. B. L. Ochman wrote a post in Ad Age entitled "Everyone's Talking About It, But Should You be Doing It?" In her article, she maintains that not all companies should be tweeting.

Here are 10 reasons why your company probably should not be tweeting:

1. You think using Twitter is a social-media strategy. It's a tactic, a tool, not a strategy.
2. Every tweet has to be approved by legal.
3. You plan to use Twitter for nothing but broadcasting headlines or deals.
4. You think a ghost tweeter for the president of your company is OK.
5. You are not going to respond when people direct tweets at you.
6. You think Tweeting as XYZ Corp. and using the company logo as your avatar might be a good idea.
7. You think all that matters on Twitter is getting a lot of people to follow you.
8. You want to protect your updates.
9. You plan to track Twitter with Google Analytics.
10. You think you can just jump in and start tweeting.

Ochman goes into greater detail on each reason in her article. To read the article in its entirety, click here.

8 brand case studies of social media practices

Today at noon, Michelle and I attended a very informative presentation on social media at a luncheon meeting of the Capital City Communicators.

Sara Prentice and Ethan Huffman of the Idaho National Laboratory were the speakers. They are from the public affairs and strategic communications groups at INL (operated by the US Department of Energy).

Sara and Ethan said their research began with the use of social media in emergency management. It developed into a complete overview of the trends and best practices.

A definition by the Web Content Report says social media is “web users generating their own content in a collaborative, community-driven way.””

It’s an important topic for many reasons:

• Audiences changing
(77% of GenX, GenY, and Millenials would rather give up newspapers and TV rather than computer and internet access)
• Not just a trend -there are now 130 million blogs
• News media are looking at blogs as much as traditional sources
• Global shift in communications practices
• Corporate distrust (only 17% of people believe what CEO says)


So, what organizations are capitalizing on social media?

1. Goodwill
A fashion icon for Goodwill stores? Check out: “DC Goodwill Fashion Blog”

2. LA Fire Department
The fire chief blogs about training, awards, and programs. They even Twitter about every call & response and post on YouTube & Flicker.

3. JetBlue Airways
Shape public perception with its Customer Bill of Rights. Two full-time employees follow social media. And now the airline is also tweet-ing deals: http://twitter.com/JetBlue

4. Comcast
Turning around customer service by responding to complaints online. Now they have a comcastcares twitter

5. Blendtech
A $400 blender? Supported by a award-winning “Will It Blend?”series on YouTube with CEO Tom Dickson.

6. Southwest Airlines
Nuts About Southwest gives their side of the story faster.

7. Deloitte

Built company morale across all its offices with an internal film festival. Employees made their own videos about why they liked their jobs. Some 350 were submitted -employees voted the winner "The Green Dot”

8. Idaho National Laboratory
Dave & Juan’s blog for employee relationships. INL@Work promotes its workforce community. Check out the YouTube video of the INL glass blower. www.youtube.com/idahonationallab

Overall, here is what Sara and Ethan say works:
• Conversational dialogue
• Corporate transparency
• News not found anywhere else
• Personal stories
• Live or first-hand accounts (red cross chat)



They also offered these 7 tips to get started:
1. educate yourself
2. be a change agent
3. put together a plan
4. adapt your content
5. identify and develop relationships
6. being monitoring the networks
7. be disruptive

5 Steps to Marketing in the World of the Web

A business contact of mine, Tom Hayes, released a book last year entitled Jump Point. He also sent me a copy of an article he wrote for the Wall Street Journal regarding the crucial question facing the industry today: How to leverage the social networking phenomenon into actual profits?

Hayes said, “There isn’t a smart company today that isn’t implementing some kind of online community, wiki or blog strategy.” But where should we be moving? Here are Hayes’ five steps to marketing in the world of the web, Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, and more.

1. From loyalty to attention

Before you can win consumer loyalty, you have to capture and reward consumer attention.
Example: Virgin Mobile gives a minute of free phone time for every minute of advertising a customer accepts

2. From crowds to clouds

Once you get that attention-once you generate heavy traffic to your site, gather a large league of “friends” on MySpace, or span a dedicated following on Twitter.

3. From places to spaces

Consumers are increasingly organizing themselves into new communities-not just the big generic social communities, but myriad idiosyncratic slices of narrow, passionate interest. When efficiently targeted, they can be highly responsive, lucrative, and loyal.

4. From memes to bemes

In the Age of Broadcast, good advertising could occasionally manufacture memes of tremendous social impact. Now we call them bemes. Bemes are sent by members of social communities to each other and typically contain a reward or exclusive offer, which, when redeemed, also results in a reward coupon for the sender.

5. From silos to simultaneity

Too many retailers today persist in believing that online shopping is merely a virtual extension of real world shopping. That is a big mistake. Rather, online and offline need to coexist, and we need to rethink how they relate.