Last week, tens of thousands of tech junkies flocked to Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), eager to get their hands on the latest electronic gadgets, network with like-minded professionals, and maybe catch a glimpse of visiting celebrities. With so many savvy users in the same place, it’s no surprise that the event generated a massive Twitter buzz. We thought it would be interesting to let loose our VoxTrot Opinion technology on the CES-related tweetstream – here’s what we learned.

New TV and 3D technologies overwhelmingly garnered the most praise on Twitter, led by the Boxee Box, which directly links internet content to your TV, and four separate television manufacturers who launched 3D sets. The Boxee Box took top honors in the “Last Gadget Standing” competition for most exciting new gadget at CES (as judged by audience applause).

Mobile technology also got people at CES excited, making up 15% of relevant CES related tweets. This conversation was driven mostly by Google’s Nexus One, RCA Airnergy’s wireless charger and FLO TV’s mobile live TV player. There were far too many new gadgets to create a category for each of them, but rave reviews for all other consumer electronics at CES made up fully one fifth of tweets.

Not everyone was satisfied with what they saw at CES, however.

• Ten percent of people were less than impressed with the new technologies and exhibits they saw at CES. Some thought that 3D TVs and games were gimmicky, while others simply didn’t see anything that wow’ed them
• Another 13% thought that the atmosphere at CES was lacking, especially as compared to last year. This included seeing lower profile displays, fewer giveaways and fewer “booth babes”
• Finally, AT&T frustrated many iPhone users with spotty 3G and wireless coverage at the Las Vegas convention. The increasingly popular hashtag #attfail saw a lot of use as tech junkies lashed out at AT&T (13% of conversation)

With CES 2010 now a memory and a whole year of new technology ahead of us, we know that people will continue to tweet about their favorite (and least favorite) gadgets – and Crimson Hexagon will be right there to measure the conversation.

Tags: advertising, events, news, uh oh by dylan
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Inglorious Basterds won at the box office and dominated Twitter conversations this weekend.  In addition to grossing nearly $37 million, Quentin Tarantino’s World War II-themed saga has been afixed to Twitter’s trending topics list since Friday.

Word of mouth referrals are nothing new to the movie business.  But, as Simon Dumenco (@simondumenco) points out in Friday’s AdAge, Twitter brings an element of speed and reach that is entirely new – and, he argues – potentially threatening to Hollywood.  To better understand Twitter content about new releases, Dumenco speculates that “…someday soon, someone’s going to get a PhD in the statistical parsing of Twitter data streams…”

Well, Mr. Dumenco, let us humbly assert that someday is today.  Crimson Hexagon turned its algorithm (created by a Harvard PhD professor) loose on this weekend’s Twitter conversation about Inglorious Basterds.

We performed the PhD magic on a sample of over 4500 Tweets from this weekend and found that:

• 40% of all Tweets on Inglorious praised the film, with an additional 9% hailing it as classic Tarantino
• Anticipation was still high, with almost a quarter of all Twitters talking about the movie still eager to see it
• The critics? Quiet so far, with only 8% of Tweets expressing disappointment at Tarantino or the film
• Finally, 14% want to know others’ opinions about the movie: Glad we could help

Tags: advertising, data, events, measurement by Megan Costello
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100 Million viewers tuned in on Sunday evening to view a classic clash of the titans. They were treated to a record-setting interception by James Harrison, a heated 4^th quarter rally by both teams, and a flood of new commercials with animals. Priced at $3M per 30-second spot, NBC sold a record $206M in advertising for the big game. In this economy that kind of spending reminds me of Doug Flutie’s Hail Mary pass – go for broke! Who says traditional channels are dead?

Some advertisers, such as Pedigree, have embraced the multi-channel experience of today’s consumers coordinating campaigns across traditional and digital domains. But even for those that haven’t explicitly gone digital yet, many consumers are taking them there anyway. Thousands of viewers were already blogging and tweeting about the new flock of commercials before the Steelers finished their Dom Perignon. At Crimson Hexagon, we wanted to know who successfully made the leap from mainstream to digital buzz. A look at both beverages and foods shows that results were mixed.

Running with the Clydesdales

Online Buzz for Beverage Brands

Anheuser-Busch once again led the pack in buying eight spots (four for Bud and four for BudLight). Given its long history of Super Bowl advertising, it’s no wonder that the buzz for Bud actually started ahead of the game, and has risen to nearly eight times the pre-game level.

In the standing battle between Coke and Pepsi (each invested in three spots), Pepsi appears to have made the bigger splash. Pepsi more than doubled online buzz, bringing it even (and heading higher) than Coke, which has seen minimal lift over its already strong buzz presence.

But the real winner within the drinks category so far has been Sobe Life Water. In the first two days, Sobe’s one commercial (featuring cameos by NFL players dancing with lizards in a 3D variant on Swan Lake) netted them buzz roughly five times their pre-game level. As if NFL players in tutus weren’t enough, Sobe’s choice to make this ad 3D generated extra anticipatory buzz the entire week leading into the Super Bowl.

Running for the Border

Online Buzz for Food & Snack Brands

Now perhaps it was because Taco Bell ignored the rule about including animals, but I find it pretty surprising that their Speed Date commercial hasn’t noticeably moved the needle. Maybe the offline buzz simply moved too fast to be caught online… Or maybe Draft FCB will be rethinking its approach to digital this week.

In other junk food news… chips appear to be highly bloggable. Cheetos has seen five times more buzz than before the Super Bowl. But Doritos’ two commercials led the pack with a 10 times jump in online chatter. How’d they do it? Well, they tapped into both the traditional Power of Creative Crunch and the wisdom of their chip-eating crowd. Who could have predicted such success would come from actively engaging your customers?

Booth Review

All this leads to some tough questions for agencies and brand managers who participated in this year’s Super Ad Bowl. Brows are furrowed as they digest the results of their commercials and turn their eyes towards managing the ongoing campaigns.

For the majority of brands that saw a big boost in buzz, kudos are warranted. But now that consumers are talking, the questions become:

• What are they talking about? (Was it “funny”, “same as last year”, or “better than Apple’s 1984 commercial”?)
• Are the topics discussed consistent with our goals for the brand? (Are our brand attributes performing as expected? How’s our positive share of voice vs. our competitors?)
• Who was talking and in which channels? (Was it bloggers, or were tweets flying around like paper airplanes in front of a substitute teacher?)

For those left in the dust, the question is “Where’s the buzz”? Perhaps their target audience somehow hasn’t heard about this whole social media thing yet (I give Frosted Flakes a little more leeway on this than Taco Bell). Or perhaps there’s only so much buzz a brand can take – had Coke already reached an optimal amount of ongoing buzz?

For the few standing on the sidelines, the question is whether it was worth saving the $3M per spot. Did you miss a chance to Steel the show?

Tags: advertising, brand, brand monitoring, customer voice, events, marketing, measurement, social web by admin
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Agencies and a few brave clients converged on OMMA Social in San Francisco earlier this week. The most debated panel was about “Personal CPM” (a term championed by Charlene Li back in 2007).

In short, personal CPM reflects each person’s value as a publisher of content with influence. Everyone will develop their own number which defines their worth to an advertiser or a marketer. Accordingly,  companies will market through high-CPM individuals rather than market to the unwashed masses directly.

The prolific David Berkowitz raised the creepiness issue. Is marketing through someone and piggybacking on their personal brands somehow creepier than direct messages?

Maybe—to me the real issue is that things we do offline constantly seem creepier when they’re brought online. Marketers sell through the credibility of other people in other media all the time: from celebrity endorsements (Boomers can buy Vuitton if Keith Richards does) to product placements (Ford’s a lot cooler when Will Smith is driving).  One of the panelists mentioned that he was happy to hand over his grocery store card and embedded personal info to save a buck—and, presumably, does not worry about the invisible transactions that may or may not occur later that day (like their correlating his love for cinnamon with a cinnamon cereal promo, or, more nefariously, selling his love for Ho-Hos and cigarettes to a health insurer.)

Online, these brand piggybacks on people’s credibility are more visible in a new medium where authenticity is still valued. Everyone’s creep factor will be different on this one, and the murky definition of creepy leaves us with Justice Potter Stewart, who famously said of obscenity: I know it when I see it.

Photo credit:  Lara604

Tags: advertising, marketing, uh oh by admin
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Less than 6 weeks ago, Pepsi was grabbing attention in the blogosphere with leaks of their new branding. The company followed up by sending the new cans to 25 of the blogging elite and soliciting feedback on Friendfeed. Reaction to both the logo and the campaign was somewhat mixed, but Pepsi deserves credit for adopting a direct and fresh style to generate buzz beyond the tired milieu of the insider blog or vanilla social network presence.

The company’s in the spotlight once again after publishing ads for Pepsi Max in a German magazine featuring a black-humor take on the suicide of a personified calorie.  The (suspiciously crisp) images of the ads have been inciting a fiery backlash centered around the fact that most people don’t find suicide all that funny (surprise!). Recall GM’s 2007 Superbowl spot, which showed an assembly robot throwing itself off a bridge, was withdrawn amid public criticism.  Pepsi’s already pulled the ad but the question remains: what the devil are they up to?

Pepsi is a Fortune 100 company with a colossal marketing engine. Having bought two spots in last year’s Superbowl, they surely were aware of GM’s snafu. For me to believe that their publishing a highly controversial advertisement in a single magazine in Düsseldorf is some kind of fluke requires excessive suspension of disbelief. Yet, by publishing on such a small scale and then quickly retracting, Pepsi has achieved the corporate equivalent of plausible deniability.

Normally this type of ‘gaffe’ is a challenge to a brand’s reputation. I think there are still a few dents in the Kevlar over at Motrin marketing, and they were making light of baby slings, not suicide. But what’s left to criticize Pepsi® for? The ads have been withdrawn, there’s no real physical evidence to speak of, and the ads’ short reach diminishes perceived accountability. I’ve noticed that while many commenters lambaste the subject matter, there is surprisingly little bile toward Pepsi for choosing to employ it.

So Pepsi has managed once again to initiate massive word of mouth interest in their brand at nearly zero cost.  They’re clearly gained a tolerance for risk and I can’t wait to see what’s next in Pepsi’s special ops marketing campaign. I just wonder in their quest to stir up buzz they’ll end up poking the beehive just a little too hard.

Tags: advertising, brand, marketing, uh oh, uncategorized by edward
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Marta Strickland of Organic has a terrific article in AdAge on the looming intersection of semantic web and marketing. The article’s title What Can Semantic Web—or Web 3.0—Can Do for Marketers? was bound to raise some hackles: our Utopian semantically-rich online future meets marketers flogging their wares online. Strickland introduces the concept of 3.0 and uncovering meaning behind the data, and contemplates what semantic capability could mean for making ads relevant and metrics meaningful.

The value of understanding meaning as well as words is becoming ever clearer. Marketers looking to understand how far buzz is resonating as well as where to place campaigns are all too familiar with the limitations of simple keyword matching. And any web user who has searched for Pink the singer versus Victoria’s Secret Pink lingerie versus breast cancer Pink can relate to their keyword pain.

How might Web 3.0 change this? Google AdWords currently places ads primarily based on a keyword approach. How long will it be before AdWords or other prominent ad networks develop or partner for semantic capability, ensuring marketers know which “Pink” they’re getting?

Today there’s still some confusion about which online marketing tactics are resonating, and how best to measure their ROI. Marketers are still learning where they can and can’t play successfully online. Strickland poses the right question at the end: anyone promising to bring semantic benefit to your business should be able to readily explain how their technology will make your ads more relevant and your metrics more meaningful. Bridging the disconnect with ad-weary consumers and helping marketers measure their results will help marketers better target their onlne efforts—always important, but vital in a downturn.

Tags: advertising, marketing, semantic web by admin
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For everyone that missed the excitement: Motrin, a staid J&J brand, had a social media campaign blow up in their faces last weekend. They posted an online video, aimed at mothers with young children, that was perceived by some ‘Mommy Bloggers’ as condescending and preachy.  A firestorm rapidly ensued on Twitter, video parodies appeared on Facebook, and the social media cognoscenti emerged to offer their counsel to the surprised brand managers. Motrin, to their credit, reacted quickly, pulling the advertisement and issuing an apology within 48 hours.

To borrow a phrase from State Farm’s ad campaign:  Now what ?

Counterintuitively, Motrin is in a great position for its next foray into the social media conversation. The outpouring of customer opinion, albeit negative, has been a fire-hose of feedback on the Motrin product and brand. This feedback can be a valuable resource for Motrin when constructing their social media engagement.

Motrin has the opportunity to use this episode and its unsightly residue in the blogosphere to learn three things that will help their future social media efforts

1. What were people’s initial perceptions of product or brand?
This incident probably generated more text from consumers about Motrin than has been written in the last five years.  The insight mined from these comments can be used to help steer future product innovations or marketing planning .

2. Who are the key influencers in the social network?
Knowing how opinions spread, the key channels, and the node influencers, will help Motrin avoid future problems. By understanding whom they might reach out to and give them a roadmap to spread desirable messaging.

3. How long will the damage last?
Motrin will learn how badly this incident has tarnished their brand, if at all. (Personally, I view this as a case of ‘any publicity is good publicity’). Motrin has found itself with a naturally-occuring case study for gauging the ROI of social media investments.. This lesson can help them weigh the benefits of social media marketing, as well as understand the pitfalls.

Tags: advertising, brand, brand monitoring, uh oh by edward
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BusinessWeek Online reports on a move by Google to make social network advertising more relevant by developing an InfluenceRank. This technology would help assess an individual socnet member’s level of influence over a group of peers — sort of a FICO score of your personal profile’s influence.

Joe Marchese at MediaPost’s Online Spin offers an interesting perspective: it’s clear you can’t directly correlate activity with influence, without risking overvaluing the influence of a follow-happy Florida car dealer who’s finagled more reciprocal Twitter relationships than Peter Kim. More importantly, what will marketers do with influence levels; will paying a higher CPM on a higher InfluenceRank personal profile actually achieve influence? This capability might end up a red herring; offering a quick-fix to marketers reluctant to dive deep into developing the social media capabilities that might drive longer term community value.

Tags: advertising, marketing, measurement by admin
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