September | 2010 | Social Networking and New Markets

That’s the way to go, Wash Po | Advantage social

September 6, 2010 1 Comment

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Metrics are the one thing that can keep your dream alive. Esp if you are a newspaper in the face of an onslaught of new technology and waning interest in old tales..

Sounding upbeat on analytics definitely makes us a miniscule minority, but then if you read thru this NY Times copy, you can see what is behind the enthusiasm to read those boring graphs and irritating red dots. After all, getting to instantly correct something in your approach is a tangible win and gets results too.

Looking to the public for insight on how to cover a topic is never comfortable for newsrooms, which have the deeply held belief that readers come to a newspaper not only for its information but also for its editorial judgment. But many newsrooms now seem to be re-examining that idea and embracing, albeit cautiously, a more democratic approach to serving up the news, particularly online.

“How can you say you don’t care what your customers think?” asked Alan Murray, who oversees online news at The Wall Street Journal. “We care a lot about what our readers think. But our readers also care a lot about our editorial judgment. So we’re always trying to balance the two.”

Editors at The Journal, like those at other large newspapers, follow the Web traffic metrics closely. The paper’s top editors begin their morning news meetings with a rundown of data points, including the most popular search terms on WSJ.com, which articles are generating the most traffic and what posts are generating buzz on Twitter.

At The Washington Post, a television screen with an array of data — the number of unique visitors towashingtonpost.com, how many articles those visitors view and where on the Web those visitors came from — is on display for the entire newsroom. A red or green marker designates each data point, indicating whether the Web site’s goal for the month on that particular metric has been met. About 120 people in The Post’s newsroom get an e-mail each day laying out how the Web site performed in the closely watched metrics — 46 in all.

Feb 7 WaPo Front Page: Stimulus Bill Compromis...

Image by MyEyeSees via Flickr

TBD director not satisfied with how Washington Post used its video feed during Discovery hostage standoff (thenextweb.com)
WaPo poll: Don’t get cocky, GOP! (hotair.com)
WaPO Secret America, site up (warintel.blogspot.com)

Filed under Social Media Tagged with Media, Newspapers, Social Networking, United States, Wall Street Journal, WaPo, Wash Po, Washington Post

Virgin: The hits keep coming | Advantage Brands

September 5, 2010 Leave a comment

Virgin’s maverick brand has not been getting any help from its failure to launch in the contiguous United States across the pond or a virtual no-show in the F1 calendar by the deep blue and deep behind Virgin F1 team. Now its Virgin Atlantic Airline is overcoming last year’s “Red Hot” $8 million in advertising with a new premium advertising campaign with almost double the tab as FT reports in face of higher losses, smaller routes and a lot of job cuts at the Airline. Virgin is also likely to face increasing competition in an industry that suffered $9 bn in losses in 2009 with BA and Iberia also merging together. The campaign likely builds on the brand’s comeback in business travel.

The airline’s 25th anniversary campaign did not help it much but the company attributes that to the recession

Virgin Atlantic Airways is to nearly double its advertising spending this year on a global campaign due to start just weeks after the airline reported the worst losses in its 26-year history.

In a further sign of recovery that some advertisers are seeing around the world, the carrier founded by Sir Richard Branson will on Wednesday launch a £10m ($15m) campaign, its first global marketing effort.

Virgin Atlantic’s new campaign will focus on 13 of the airline’s most important markets, including the US, the Caribbean, India, China, Dubai and Australia.

The details of the campaign are for all to see in visual and print:

(campaign) The creative aims to capture the glamour, style and comfort of flying Virgin Atlantic Upper Class and the little touches of ‘Je ne sais quoi’ that set it apart.

The campaign first launched in the US at the end of May and is in the process of being rolled out across 32 key destination markets for the Sir Richard Branson-controlled airline.

Virgin's Flights of Fancy for the Premium 'je ne sais quoi' - This time in economic pink

Filed under Social Media

The Coca Cola company gets everyone in a huddle | Advantage social

September 5, 2010 Leave a comment

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With RFID updating Facebook status and auto tagging of all the party photographs. This is really a brand’s dream! Now you know why you could have used more of Twitter..but the winner seems to be Facebook with the Facebook pages becoming a cult. Our brand page here at http://tr.im/advantage We could all use those wristbands

Coke Israel team doing a big favor to the Haifa labs there and putting MTV Miami nights to shame! coke Ireland also had a few bugs of its own trawling Facebook for brand value. Definitive an active lifestyle!

Among other recent successes, coke had achieved 86 million impressions when it launched itself as a keyword/trend on Twitter’s promoted tweets!

In just 24 hours, Coca-Cola’s first Promoted Trend garnered 86 million impressions and an engagement rate of 6%, according to the company’s Global Interactive Marketing Vice President Carol Kruse in an interview with The Financial Times.Following in the footsteps of Disney/Pixar, Coca-Cola is the second company to reach Twitter() audiences by advertising as a Trending Topic on Twitter.

The cost for this particular Twitter ad buy is said to be tens of thousands of dollars, but Kruse indicated that the cost was small relative to other ad buys and that Coke is pretty pleased with its first Promoted Trends experiment.

The company choose to run with its Promoted Trend campaign during Wednesday’s World Cup matches, a peak time for Twitter activity. The decision was a risky bet that could have yielded mixed results due to Twitter’s inability to keep the service up during World Cup online hysteria. Fortunately for Coke, its risky decision paid off

Did you know that globally Coca Cola is the most well understood phrase in any language and beats no, yes or even Mamma! It is actually voted second after the word OK

Israeli Teens Swipe Wristbands to Update Facebook Status (adage.com)
Coca-Cola Launch the ‘Rumble Bug’ Online Game (adland.tv)
Shocking hidden message on Coca-Cola logo, and other Facebook scams (sophos.com)
The real world ‘Like’ – Coca-Cola village and Facebook (nickburcher.com)
Dear Coca Cola (merelyacademic.blogspot.com)

Filed under Digital Media, Marketing Tagged with Coca-Cola, Facebook, Haifa, Ireland, Online Communities, Radio-frequency identification, Social Networking, Twitter

The new post after Apple rode tech | Advantage Social

September 4, 2010 1 Comment

Image by tsevis via Flickr

Actually Apple re-wrote tech again in last week’s event and I still can’t deal with it. Because right now, we have to apply a wait and watch to any hardware technology based new marketing and lifestyle tools. With Facebook it was not a platform or a technology, even if there was, it was ubiquitous by its absence from user psychology. Steve Jobs, Apple, Ping, ABC and even the other networks that signed up with their largest shareholder’s hobby project, are more in the game of transforming the technology rather than Web 2.0.

Apple is usually more about design and Marketing whence both Ping and Apple TV ( which has till now been only a hobby project experimenting with a host of amateur video related features and owning the programming age of digital) are likely to be the talk of the town once they do get into their next phase as the friendly coaster in the living room to play with when fiddling around on iPhone or probably even a more refined choice of Apple gadgets for a marketing friendly and design friendly living room.

On the ebooks front, Kindle has been keeping its own too, so the war is still on the tech parts and user adoption is unlikely to ramp up to speed while it is so. i for one, don’t like my music to speak too much to me as it gets too intense and I’d rather it stays in the background even when it is my favorite tune. I am sure humans will never let tech invade their living room for tech’s sake.