Vox Twitter: Memorial Day Movies
Really feeling the love from the folks at CNN.com now… Today’s segment on what Twitter has to say about the current summer blockbusters…
Really feeling the love from the folks at CNN.com now… Today’s segment on what Twitter has to say about the current summer blockbusters…
Sometimes finding the answer means going beyond the question.
Yesterday marked our debut on CNN.com, and we were understandably jacked by the whole experience. The topic happened to be twitter reactions to the American Idol finale – a long way from our United Nations trouble-spot identification days – but an interesting topic nonetheless.
What emerged from the data was a slight edge for Adam Lambert over Kris Allen, meaning our “prediction” would have lined up with everyone else’s.
But something else emerged from the data… namely that 3% of the Twitter conversation was vehemently ANTI-Adam, while Kris had no such negatives. Adding Adam negatives to Kris’ positives put Kris over the top – something we saw given the nature of our technology, but no one else did.
The only way to understand what the online conversation really means is to move beyond first generation keyword analysis. That’s exactly what we do, and at the risk of boastfulness, our “big time” premiere proved to be a powerful demonstration of that fact.
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Today CNN.com debuted what will become a regular segment… using Crimson Hexagon’s VoxTrot to understand what’s really happening in the conversation on Twitter.
Check it out, from about the 1:00 mark to 4:00…
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Ad Age Top 20 Blogger Jason Falls interviews our own Mike Troiano on Social Media Explorer. Great stuff, thanks, Jason!
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Online and offline, consumers are passionate about their brands. Tropicana recently swallowed a mouthful of pulp with their redesign of their flagship product Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice.
The redesign is drawing thoughtful critique and strong commentary online, but Tropicana insists that it’s not the volume of negative buzz that swayed them to revert to the old design. The online outcry is a “fraction of a percent of the people who buy the product,” according to Neil Campbell, president of Tropicana North America. Rather, Tropicana says it is rolling back the design because the negative reaction came in part from some of its “most loyal consumers.”
To me, this feels like an arbitrary and false distinction. Too many companies are still mentally dividing the universe into the angry hordes online who bring down brands and the loyal purchasers who exist primarily in an offline world.
Heads up to marketers: these worlds are officially colliding. As women 55+ make up the fast growing group on facebook, it’s time to re-think assumptions about how and where consumer opinions spread. It’s a new reality that every individual is armed with a printing press, and a new necessity to understand how online information sharing can ignite to influence a wide swath of consumers.
Photo credit: justinlai
Paul Chaney of Conversational Media Marketing and Bizzuka compiled a timely video series with nine people’s opinions on stretching marketing dollars.
Since these videos were shot, pressure on marketing plans has only increased: according to an ANA survey released today, 93% of marketers are looking at areas of cost reduction and 48% specifically looking at reducing agency compensation.
I shared some thoughts on SMB website development and measurement best practices. Note to self: remove dorky badge and wear non-reflective lenses next time.
Be sure to check out Ann Handley of MarketingProfs on social media, and David Meerman Scott on content marketing.
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 4th 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:
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?
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
In the age of user generated content, design-on-line computers and customized tennis shoes it was a bit odd to hear the joint announcement from the Gap and Pantone earlier this week that 2009 was, in fact, the year of Mimosa – not the drink, but the color.
At first (champagne-induced) blush it seems so 1993, in a preppy kids growing out their hair and getting on the grunge bandwagon kind of way. Are retailers actually so out of touch that they would dare to impose such a style mandate on their customers? Will people really wear Mimosa (without spilling it on themselves) just because the Gap has said that it is the color of 2009? Where is the groundswell effect in all this, or is fashion inherently top-down and curated?
We have less than four weeks to find out, as Mimosa tees will be available for purchase through the middle of February only at Gap’s rotating concept store on Fifth Avenue.
And for those who are curious, Pantone claims that Mimosa is “optimistic, hopeful, reassuring, warm, cheerful, radiant [and] versatile.” Maybe everyone needs a little more Mimosa in 2009 after all.
Photo credit: pasotraspaso
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.
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