According to Nielsen, 12% of US Super Bowl viewers multitasked by browsing the Web during the game last year. The top site visited was Facebook, and nearly one-third of multitaskers visited some kind of member community—for more than 16 minutes on average. Just as multitaskers post status updates and tweets about their favorite shows, when Super Bowl time comes they chatter about their favorite ads.

What created the most buzz in this year’s Super Bowl? Twitter employee Kevin Weil posted a fascinating minute-by-minute breakdown yesterday of Twitter updates mentioning brands during the game. It’s definitely worth a look.

The first @DoritosUSA ad at marker C caused the largest per-minute volume of commercial-related tweets — for the minute following the ad, related tweets were 19% of all tweets we saw, eclipsing even the chatter around the Super Bowl itself for a brief period. The second half began with a bang as @TheSaints recovered a surprise onside kick, and for the next minute 44% of all worldwide tweets were about football. Chatter around brands had meanwhile dropped to much lower levels until @Google’s Parisian Love commercial sparked viewers once more.

The tens of thousands of tweets at stake during the Super Bowl can mean an earned-media coup for brands—if viewers find the creative worth talking about. The new eMarketer Insight Brief, “What You Need to Know About Earned Media,” explains how good content is critical to getting consumers to spread marketers’ messages for them. Making ads easily shareable helps too—and this year YouTube has added to its Super Bowl Ad Blitz voting site hooks to share spots on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Controversy can boost chatter as well. After the game, Audi crept up BrandBowl’s Twitter monitoring scoreboard as users disagreed on whether the “Green Police” had an eco-friendly message.

But earned media is ultimately in the control of consumers, and marketers with unappealing content might find themselves the target of a Twitter #advertisingfail hashtag. Twitter users were unimpressed with GoDaddy’s efforts this year, and Dockers, which included an online call to action in its commercial, was unprepared for Super Bowl levels of traffic to its contest site.

More advice from “What You Need to Know About Earned Media” on boosting earned-media exposure:

• Give people good content, especially content they can personalize and send on to their friends. The better the content, the more likely they will be to share it.
• Good creative that resonates with viewers will help spur social sharing and online discussion.

• Actively enable sharing by adding distribution buttons on Facebook, Twitter and other sites.
• Provide a contest or other incentives to encourage people to pass messages along.

“What You Need to Know About Earned Media” is part of a series of eMarketer Insight Briefs focused on social media marketing. Available exclusively to Total Access subscribers, the seven briefs, along with a PowerPoint slideshow, answer the most common and most pressing questions that businesses have about social media marketing.

Total Access subscribers, log in and view the Insight Briefs now. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription today.

If you accept that your company needs to be involved in social media—as most marketers do—then it’s important to figure out where social media fits within your organization.

Tempting as it might be to compartmentalize social media, most companies find that it gets assimilated into various functional teams, including marketing and communications, sales, customer service, human resources, IT and executive management. Firms from Ford Motor Co. to Dunkin’ Donuts to Hewlett-Packard describe social media as a cross-organizational discipline that touches a wide range of functions.

Best Buy, for example, encouraged hundreds of employees to engage with customers who have questions about the company and its products through Twitter. Dubbed Twelpforce, the feed not only deals with customer service issues that arise through social media, but also functions as marketing vehicle, resulting in tweets like this:

While some businesses, like Best Buy or HP, have attempted to integrate social media across the organization, that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a dedicated social media department, or at least an individual in charge of the company’s overall social presence. This is essential, particularly at larger companies with complex structures. This person or team needs to work closely with other departments that participate in the social media effort. Promotion and customer service on Twitter is good, but disseminating information learned from Twitter across the organization to drive results is better. See this recent article from our newsletter for more on measuring ROI on social efforts.

In my recently published report, “Where Does Social Media Fit Within an Organization?,” I discuss in detail how different companies have weaved social media into the corporate fabric and demonstrated success at a variety of levels. A key takeaway:

More and more opportunities will present themselves for companies to use social channels to increase their business. The landscape will change rapidly, so tactics that might have seemed irrelevant in 2009 might be on the table in 2010 or 2011. Stay tuned as social channels evolve and be creative in how they are used within an organization.

Total Access subscribers, log in and view the Insight Briefs now. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription today.

Sunday’s big game between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts was nearly as splashy in social media as it was on TV.

Marketers that paid millions to advertise during the telecast also put sizeable energy into making sure that their ads had visibility on the social web. Coca-Cola Co. teamed up with Facebook to distribute Coke-themed virtual gifts and preview its Super Bowl spots for its fans. Pepsi notoriously bowed out of advertising during the game in favor of a cause-related digital marketing initiative that included a major presence on Facebook. Other marketers took to Twitter to keep their ads top of mind among consumers.

Even before the game telecast, the online buzz surrounding football star Tim Tebow’s ad for Focus on the Family was strong, according to Nielsen Co. In the two months ending January 31, the ad garnered 33.4% of all Super Bowl ad-related buzz online. Meanwhile, the NFL created a Twitter tag, #SB44, and encouraged fans to use the tag when they discussed the game.

With all the hype, what was the end result? The most-watched television event of all time. CBS estimates that the 2010 Super Bowl drew 106.5 million viewers, beating the famed 1983 “M*A*S*H” series finale, which was watched by about 105.9 million.

There’s no doubt that all the activity surrounding the Super Bowl is a signal that TV is finally getting more social, though we’re certainly not all the way there. While the coming onslaught of Internet-ready televisions will play a role, the entertainment industry has yet to figure out how to logically incorporate social media into the act of watching television. But they will.

The socialization of TV is one of eight trends that I cover in my new eMarketer Insight Brief “The Future of Social Media Marketing.” Some of my other predictions include:

• Advertising will not be the primary revenue driver for social media.
• Status updates will be key.
• Social will make search more personal—and more powerful.
• Social media monitoring will bring true insights.

“The Future of Social Media Marketing” is part of a series of eMarketer Insight Briefs focused on social media marketing. Available exclusively to Total Access subscribers, the seven briefs, along with a PowerPoint slideshow, answer the most common and most pressing questions that businesses have about social media marketing.

Total Access subscribers, log in and view the Insight Briefs now. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription today.

It’s always nice to find new research that supports so much that has gone before. In this instance, I refer to a press release from the Continuum Crew announcing that baby boomers are “emerging as New Social Media Mavens.” The survey covered 700 respondents from the Greenfield Online Panel, ages 35 and older.

My upcoming report, Boomers and Social Media, shows that boomers are flocking to Facebook. The main reason is the same as every other generation has adopted social networking: They want to be connected to family and friends. In fact, boomers are more open to meeting new people through social networks than any other generation, according to a survey by EuroRSCG Worldwide.

With all the boomers crowding on to Facebook, some media outlets wondered if they weren’t chasing away younger networkers. That does not seem to be the case, especially since the Continuum Crew survey found that its empty-nester respondents reported an “unprecedented” number of adult children were moving back home, thanks to the recession. If kids can swallow their pride and move back in with Mom and Dad, they can’t get too picky about sharing a social network.

When was the last time you cancelled your Super Bowl party because your favorite team wasn’t playing in the game? That was the question posed by Michael DiLorenzo, the National Hockey League’s social media and digital communications manager, at the Business Development Institute’s Social Integration breakfast Wednesday.

DiLorenzo explained that one the challenges faced by the NHL is convincing fans to “activate nationally” during the Stanley Cup playoffs — that is, getting people to care and watch playoff games even if their local or favorite team isn’t playing. So when a couple innovative fans came up with the idea to have a “Tweet Up” for the 2009 playoffs, the NHL ran with the idea. Since then, #NHLtweetup has become a great example of how marketers can use Twitter not only as an engagement tool, but as a loyalty and community building tool as well.

(Read more…)

Coca-Cola’s success in social media isn’t a secret. The company was recently named by Slate’s The Big Money as the brand “making the best use of Facebook,” and their well-publicized Expedition 206 campaign is billed as the company’s largest social media project ever. We’ve conducted several interviews in the past few months with key team members of Coca-Cola about the company’s efforts in community building and social media. Here’s a rundown:

Michael Donnelly, Coca-Cola’s Group Director of Worldwide Interactive Marketing spoke to us about the Expedition 206 project’s search for happiness, how Coke’s marketers have established best practices for social media marketing, and the challenge of ROI. Says Donnelly, in this excerpt published in our Daily Newsletter:

In general, we are very supportive of buying media within those realms. It’s like fishing where the fish are. Social media is where our consumers are at the moment. There’s no better way to amplify your message. If you’re building a major campaign and putting a lot of time and energy into enabling social and interactive aspects, you have to make sure people know about it.

Our strategy is to be everywhere our consumers are, but as a member of the community. That’s not to say that we think there’s anything wrong with big billboards in Times Square or Super Bowl commercials. There’s a time and a place for that. Within the social media marketing realm, our approach is to be a strong member of the community that’s enabling consumers to celebrate manifestations of the brand.

Michael La Kier chatted about how the company ties social media into its My Coke Rewards program and its drive to create emotional loyalty. Here’s a snippet of what he had to say about social media and mobile:

We offered mobile from day one—it is a big component of My Coke Rewards. People drink our brands on the go and don’t want to carry a bottle cap all day long. They can enter a code via mobile phone and SMS texting. Mobile has always been a pretty big part of our program from a participation standpoint and from a mobile messaging and marketing perspective. We also have a desktop widget so people can enter codes directly from their desktop computer.

We have a variety of ways for people to participate in the program—via SMS, the site and the widget. When they become members, we can look at what brands they’re drinking, which packs they’re buying, promotions they’ve participated in and rewards they’ve redeemed. We look at how people want to interact with us, what information do we want to know, how do we provide value and get value. We invite them to take surveys. We have a lot of information about what consumers are doing and their passions so that we can serve up rewards, offers and sweepstakes based on that information.

Carol Kruse, Coke’s Vice President of Global Interactive Marketing, also weighed in about earned media ROI and the evolution of social:

I think before you have ROI you have to really understand how social media is driving your business. If you’re a traditional sales funnel type of company—if you’re selling something online—you could say, “I know how many sales I got out of that social media app.” We are not a funnel company, but we still need to measure the value of what we do. I can’t measure it in actual incremental sales because I’m not selling something online. It’s much safer to say we are focusing on measuring the business value of different types of digital marketing.

In that context, we are asking whether it’s driving brand health or brand love. Is it driving purchase intent? In some cases, like search and online advertising, we have been able to measure ROI driving true incremental volumes and true increases in sales. It’s the same thing from a loyalty and CRM standpoint. We have a lot of online promotions and online loyalty programs like My Coke Rewards, and we’ve certainly measured the amount of true incremental volume those type of programs drive.

Adam Brown, Director, Office of Digital Communications & Social Media at Coke, spoke about the company’s Expedition 206 campaign:

We wanted to bring the idea of happiness to life and have as many people participate as possible. We haven’t done anything like this before, so it’s a new social media experiment. The three people chosen will blog, share photos, videos, interviews, tweets (@x206) and ideas about what makes people happy around the world. They’ll share their experiences. It’s the latest expression of the “Open Happiness” campaign brought to life through the power of social media.

We will be looking at what earned media provides from a ROI standpoint. We want to know what’s working and creating buzz and what’s not. We are using a cloud-based philosophy and we want to leverage all the new communications platforms as they come online. We can really adapt and empower our fans to create compelling content where they see fit.

Each of these interviews is available in their full form to eMarketer Total Access subscribers. Every day they have access to new interviews with digital marketing leaders and trendsetting entrepreneurs. Those full-version interviews are available (to subscribers) here:

• Carol Kruse: Coke Weighs Value of Social Media
• Michael Donnelly: Coke Crafts Social Media Marketing Blueprint
• Michael La Kier: Coke Seeks Brand Love via Online Loyalty
• Adam Brown: Coke Goes on a Happiness Mission

Most businesses have realized that when it comes to social networks like Twitter or Facebook, simply broadcasting content isn’t quite enough. Consumers want companies to engage with them on social networks — not because they want to have a relationship, per say, with a brand of soap or shampoo, but because they appreciate the opportunity to give feedback on products, receive meaningful information from brands, and catch the occasional bargain, among other things.

According to research from Cone, some 74% of US new media users have a generally more positive impression of a company or brand after interacting via new media. That might be why so many marketers are planning to move from the trial phase of their social marketing efforts toward strategic use of the channel next year: Customer retention and engagement ranked below only new customer acquisition in a Unisfair study of leading marketing priorities among US marketers in 2010.

Still, engagement means many things. For some, it means creating a team of customer service representatives to scour social networks for complaints, questions and praise. Best Buy’s Twelpforce is one successful example of this. JetBlue’s Twitter feed is another. But here’s a question that has been raised by some, and is worth considering: Are customer service efforts on Twitter a danger when customers start to expect a direct response and brands aren’t available or have the resources necessary to deliver? Will consumers view it as the same thing as not picking up the customer service phone line?

Noah Brier of The Barbarian Group, along with Hive Awards’ Alan Wolk, AdWeek Editor Brian Morrissey and Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer, chatted about the engagement expectation in this excellent video. Take a look: (Watch the whole thing, or skip to the 4:00 minute mark.)

The Social Media Bubble Part 2 of 3 from Hive Awards on Vimeo.

Money quote from Schafer:

You can’t set expectations where, if you have a problem with a Best Buy gift card, the Best Buy CEO is, all of a sudden, going to help you out. It’s just not rational. Things don’t happen at that kind of scale. At the end of the day, understanding social media as a brand doesn’t necessarily mean having a conversation with your customer. That’s a real big misnomer out there. [The alternative solution, therefore] may very well be enabling your customers to have conversations with each other.

Schafer also points out how instead of directly engaging customers on social networks, brands like Apple have created forums and communities where customers can interact with other customers or ‘brand-certified’ specialists. What do you think? Are you willing to allocate the resources to manage the engagement expectation, or are there alternative solutions? What type of social media engagement is right for your brand?

During the course of last week we weighed in on several trends to watch in 2010. Here’s a quick and tidy round-up of those predictions.

• Seven Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer’s CEO, Geoff Ramsey: During 2010, as US ad budgets crack open just a little, look for an accelerated migration of ad dollars from traditional to digital media. Advertising on social networks will never attract a large share of marketers’ ad dollars, while the classic interruption/disruption model of advertising, whereby marketers insert unwanted, usually irrelevant ads as a price the consumer must pay to view desired content, will erode, if not fade away.



• Social Media: Marketers will demand better ways to manage and measure the impact of earned media—the additional unpaid exposure a brand gets when consumers share about the brand online. Search will get more social in several ways: by including real-time content in results (e.g., Twitter posts), adding information from social network friends to results, and using collective information from other Web users to hone search relevance. These trends will yield new ad formats that may incorporate friends’ viewpoints or interactions directly into the ad—and will raise new red flags among privacy advocates. (Read more…)

The travel industry is showing slight signs of a rebound, at least, if Web traffic is any indicator. Compete recently released data which shows that while differing travel categories (hotel, cruise, air, car rental) are recovering at different rates, all categories are seeing an increase in aggregate unique visitors this year compared to 2008. From Compete’s blog:

In summary, all four categories are showing signs of recovery, and in general consumer research levels are leading indicators. But results here are based on domain level visits: a deeper assessment would include consumer engagement (deeper funnel steps like conducting a search or choosing an itinerary) and actual bookings. A true recovery will be supported by more overall research by travelers, more engagement, and more bookings – coupled with a return of pricing power.

Many consumers are still opting to stay at home, while others say they are reducing the amount of money spent on leisure travel by researching deals online before purchasing. As we recently wrote in our Daily Newsletter, “52% [of US Internet users] told About.com that, like in 2008, they would not travel this holiday season, another 24% said they were even less likely to travel this year than last. Money-saving attitudes, unsurprisingly, have an effect on what kinds of ads are most likely to reach consumers. Asked which online travel advertisements they were most interested in, large majorities of respondents wanted coupons on big-ticket travel items: airfare and hotels.”

(Read more…)

The recent news that Dell has generated a total of $6.5 million in revenue from their Twitter presence isn’t a huge shock to those who have been following (pardon the pun) Dell’s efforts on social media. The @DellOutlet Twitter account has nearly 1.5 million followers, and the company is among Twitter’s most active corporate users. Still, the announcement represents something that has been elusive for many brands using social media: Hard ROI. For Dell, it’s the second recent proclamation of social success. The company announced in June 2009 that it had earned $3 million in revenue since it started using Twitter in 2007. Now, it’s $6.5 million. Impressive stuff. From Bloomberg:

The number of users signing up to get Dell’s tweets has risen 23 percent in the past three months and now numbers 1.5 million, said Manish Mehta, vice president of Dell’s online unit. More than 100 employees send out the tweets — Twitter’s 140-character messages — over 35 different channels.

Dell, based in Round Rock, Texas, reaches 3.5 million people across the Web through social networks and its own community sites, including Direct2Dell.com and IdeaStorm, Mehta said.

Still, with lingering doubts among many marketers about whether brands can leverage Twitter’s growing popularity to show real ROI, it’s worth taking a closer look at Dell’s success.

Dell has used several different tactics on Twitter — typically a well-balanced mix of promotion and customer service through listening, among others:

Lionel Menchaca, Dell’s Chief Blogger, wrote in a Wednesday blog post that the company will continue to “Streamline our presence in social media networks, create meaningful content for customers and continue to increase our connections with them in those places” and “Continue our focus on scaling support of social media initiatives into the Dell business units.”

While the classic mantra on social media may be all about “conversation” and no upsell, the reality is that a mix of promotion and interaction can yield results, as companies like Dell, JetBlue, and Starbucks show.

More to the point: Consumers — even those on social networks — really aren’t that offended if you give them a good deal. As we wrote in a recent newsletter article, “those polled for the ‘2009 Cone Consumer New Media Study’ were interested in brands that would keep them informed, provide product information and give incentives—and generally use new media to help solve consumers’ problems.” Similarly, “an impressive 64% of ‘connected consumers’ told Razorfish they made their first purchase from a brand because of a digital experience on a Website, microsite, mobile coupon or e-mail.”

What other factors contributed to Dell’s success on Twitter? What are some other best practices for brands using social media as a marketing tactic? The comments are yours …