Digital Media « Social Networking and New Markets

Facebook Places? Nah! just try the games | Advantage social

August 23, 2010 2 Comments

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This is where Bloomberg caught it

Honda Motor Corp.’s campaign for its new CR-Z car features the hybrid vehicle in some colorful roadside billboards that can’t be seen from a freeway.

The ads are on display in Facebook Inc.’s virtual game “Car Town,” as Honda advertises on the social-network site for the first time today. The game, which allows users to collect and customize cars, has 3.1 million users. It was released on Facebook two weeks ago by Cie Games Inc.

Brands are turning to social networks to reach an audience with leisure time on its hands and the patience to sit through branded messages. Walt Disney Co., Electronic Arts Inc. and Google Inc. have all bought games makers in recent months to benefit from millions of users signing up to play.

Honda joins the august company of Starbucks, Pepsi, P&G and not to forget Coke’s brilliant virality as brand spends on social media increased by two times their 2009 budgets and the resultant Facebook executives are trying hard to keep all the gaming revenues on board as well apart from being one happy property for all brands seeking to reinventing their digital self. Most social brand offshoots are a distinct stream of thought and social conscious hoping to merge into their brands mainstream value for a ‘new me’ that is more persistent. Meanwhile even in conservative markets interactive product placement times and budgets are also likely to jump from $3.6 billion in the US and $600 million in Europe. (Europe has new laws on Product placement as designated by the common market execs).

Facebook’s ‘Car Town’ Reaps Honda Ad Spending in Shift to Games (businessweek.com)
Facebook Places and Other Location Based Billing Services (chasingeyes.com)
Social Gaming a Great Opportunity for Brands, Says Reality Digital (rushprnews.com)
Honda boosts profits through virtual Facebook game (computing.co.uk)

Filed under Digital Media, Facebook, Lifestyle Brands, Marketing, Social Media Tagged with Brands, Business, Facebook, Product placement

The Spreading Digital tentacles of lifestyle | Advantage zyaada

August 21, 2010 Leave a comment

After years of swiping that highly volatile status symbol that supplied oodles of credit to households, Visa power has finally subscribed to doing away with the cards. Starting next week ( September ’10) Visa will roll out a new payment lifestyle for subscribers on latest launch till the Holiday season gets over in December 2010 with Bank of America customers in New York. Later it will also roll the pilot with US Bancorp. Thanks Techland

Reuters reports

Customers would then “bump” their phones with point-of-sale devices in stores — actually they need only wave the phones near the devices — and their bank account data would be collected and their purchases completed.

Bank of America declined to say how many people would be involved in the pilot, and a company spokeswoman declined to comment on Visa’s involvement.

Visa spokeswoman Elvira Swanson said the Bank of America pilot was not larger than the company’s other mobile trials, but she said it could have a more powerful impact on the market than some previous pilots.

Unfortunately the pogram requires users to install new hardware on their smartphones, which does not sound like the smart thing to do for amenable users who would want to migrate to a non invasive lifestyle that does make paying and carrying digital id easy for them, no unwieldy wallets, no embarrasments at forgeting things at home / in the car.

Filed under Digital Media, Financial Services, Lifestyle Brands Tagged with Digital Media

More Digital shoppers, anyone? | Advantage social

July 12, 2010 Leave a comment

Well frankly, some brands do a great job of keeping themselves busy. P&G brands star amongst those for extending the attention span of the internet. However, they pale in comparison to AMAZON.

According to Warc

Amazon, the internet retailer, is set to challenge major grocery chains like Tesco in the UK, with the launch of an online store offering free delivery on over 20,000 food and beverage products

Also, Mobile advertising is up 60% in April-June over last year, so little wonder when P&G came forward with digital joyride budgets for each of its brands that targets ONE BILLION SHOPPERS AROUND THE WORLD using Digital Media

P&G is going with old friend and Amazon competitor Walmart to produce a movie and a ‘Future Friendly’ education drive that presumably coaches sustainability to the familiar brands of P&G last seen and heard loudly at Vancouver.

Of course mobile ads are a much different platform and more than half of those land in India or Indonesia, while P&G’s digital campaign is grounded in the US shores and Amazon, yet again, is branching out from the US, bringing groceries to UK in an effort to yet again woo the English customer. Amazon’s international footprint and that of local competitor Apple seems to have gone with the payment options on the shopping cart to the select countries that featre UK, Japan, Continental Europe and very few others.

Pepsi refresh seems to have set a measurable tone that is defining such priorities with brands eager to get the social association of good deeds, while the bigger force like Amazon still manages to go in with just a promise of quality and experience in every new market. Though the twains shall never meet, it may soon be an obvious contradiction in terms to be a social or in fact any digital brand without a social baggage of choice that defines the man. Thus of course, defining the customer experience as something bigger than buying soap or toothpaste or dinner when shopping digitally.

Filed under Digital Media, Lifestyle Brands, Online Maketing

The social media progress charts : A 2010 refresh

July 5, 2010 Leave a comment

Facebook vs Twitter

Facebook continues to draw huge crowds in 2010 crossing 3 billion visits in April 2010, while Twitter managed 147 million visitors from 21 million users. However as we tweeted, most discussions on the winnability and success of Facebook and Titter were dominated by Twitter as the platform, while the answers leaned towards the heavy usage of facebook. Apparently the tale is divided by the very fact that no one wants to discuss anything meaningful on Facebook, managing their dominant usage of facebook for the personal sphere of influence and not really as a social site for business. A simpler answer for Facebook’s continued success would thus be a simple advertisr friendly approach that the platform has propagated and that brands have lapped up by the score.

The question is whether Twitter can convert this tirade of meaningful social discussions ( including 3 out of 4 reactions to facebook) that happen on Twitter and except on facebook happen to be mostly about Twitter. While paid subscription models and even paid blogs have failed to take off thus ending the high ideals of those who wanted a paying internet / digital proposition, the advertising based models seem to have been jettisond to early by us cognoscenti on Twitter. Promoted Tweets is not the answer in terms of reach but facebook ads meaning to propagate brands and social causes are a necessary hit.

Nevertheless, as most of the talk is about twitter, there would seem to be some basis to this continued banter about Twitter's innovative reach and effectiveness for business. Stock analysts also find it to be a continuing draw, instant opinion being quite a hit in this volatile world and unless you want to discuss a movie with all your bev y of friends, saying it on Twitter seems to get it done.


Well, the next one in the 2010 refresh is on the plateau for digital books, we having chosen to bite the bullet and make the comment in the here and the now. Interestingly, USA would have us believe they have declared the world wide web within its borders! Wonder if that will even be questioned in this decade!
Also, the FIFA world cup dominated Twitter most of June hitting 6 million plus tweets on the day USA and England were both playing for the honors. Though at less than 20% of the impact in weekly trends, there were other meaningful topics too in the Top 3 with the new Lizzie Mcguire movie at #3 and the Lakers win at #2 (whatthetrend.com) This week of course there is that corner in SW1 that will vie for the honors with the cup of joy, Nadal having come out par for the course.

Filed under Digital Media, Facebook, Social Media, Superbowl, Twitter Tagged with Facebook, Facebook vs Twitter, Twitter

Mining Brand Capabilities in a recession? | Advantage Brands

June 21, 2010 Leave a comment

Significantly, during 2009 Measured media spending at Leading National Advertisers in the US and the Domestic Industry overall was down 10%. It could have been higher in terms of the cuts as most advertisers would have asked agencies to hold and at least part of the blame, even after restructuring, lies in the leading national advertisers plying their trade across myriad offices and brands, each brand manager trying to guard hs turf and avoiding significant decisions. Diktats from HO finally mean much less even at a GE organisation and unless objectives are v ery clear deeper cuts are unlikely.

Also as the world goes digital, the budgetary cuts next time will be tougher especially if social forms like facebook and twitter are able to de-google-ise the generation and deliver higher yield where like in emerging markets today, prices may continue moving north along with increases in spending on the media on the web. That promise is however a significant distance further down as we continue to delievr customization and freemium benefits to a growing generation of unemployed entrepereneurs unable to measure, support or evince interest in rebuilding the large corporations.

However, closer home there are lessons in the sustained brand support during 2009 not in China alone but right in Uncle Sam’s backyard/warehouse/main street.

Among the Top 100 advertisers, one in four spent more, betting on opportunity in the Great Recession. While there is no easy way to prove cause and effect, the sales gains at spending boosters should help reinforce the idea that advertising delivers.

If 25% decided their advertising yielded higher benefits during the dull season. the prime cuts ofcourse landed with such advertisers, Walmart pipping Macy’s in spending and sscoring a net 1.1% increase in sales in a brutal market beating the national sales graph by 3.2% s it went south in that same dull season. Even as a proportion of global sales, Walmart spent 0.59% on advertising against 0.52% in 2008 and that is a substantial investment in 2009.

The other interesting story from the crisis we featured here has been Bank of america, which plastered itself on FOX History as part of programming on American History, living a great showcase presence as it came out bleeding and needed to shore up loyalty

Good briefs.

Filed under Digital Media, Marketing Tagged with Ad Spending, Adage, Advertising, Branding, Brands, Marketing, Recession, social

The magic of Cloning and me-toos | Advantage social

May 31, 2010 1 Comment

Are they indeed paying you a complement

Pioneers please clear up the trail. The bionic era is finally upon us and today we would be delivering our first few instant cloning products in a year or two for us early adopters to enjoy and ready for global consumption. The serious discussion on artificially creating/replicating life dna in a test tube aside, the social internet and China are also doing their bit to make seemingly complicated delivery channels a non issue by in your face copy cat products and close parallels..While the iPad already has iPed, a thinner Kindle, Android, iPhone 4g and AppleTv and Google Tv are reinventing almost simultaneously, not to mention distributed alliances making the same brand of goods while earning comparable profits for the same / different corporations. Nokia is soon crossing the rubicon into computing, Vaccines are reaching many more in the third world..there is that magic in the air that probably even says Apple will thank many more people from the stage when it produces the next innovation..

Somewhere out there next to faxed blueprints of iPhones and A5s there might also be a single copy of my brain/my genome ready to be mass produced much like Model T, the North korean nuclear deterrent and Ariel or any other P&G brand. The question is however not the thieving of that idea or iPad blueprint much though the Corporation might believe so. Man by nature gives more resources to what is already successful, and similarily that which has sold will likely sell as many copies as can be produced, commoditising its brand as much as we keep producing derivative markets for anything that sells. Even in a marketing sense, there are bound to be more uses for something that has already seen a customer.

What social and convergence technologies are also doing is enabling a quicker, more comprehensive first look; engineering a second chance for failed prototypes, failed markets and failed customers; and envisioning better and quicker ‘procreation’ rather than evolution and / or even [tbd] If someone is a Fritjof Kapra fan, one might even consider the crisis as a sure sign of an age where the limitations of currency and money are obvious, but even in the hard real world creation cycles are much shorter and carrying the same idea as another’s might no longer even matter for a complement let alone a book of metaphysics..is this really that wondrous first step for a whole new species..

There’s more to convergence..

and Chris Andersen has already fit too much of it to the new tail.. and a hey, a ho and our favorite FREEMIUM..coming later on how we see this social revolution..

Filed under Digital Media, Financial Services, Marketing Tagged with Facebook, iPad, Marketing, Products, Twitter

And the winner is – digital! | Advantage Social

April 26, 2010 Leave a comment

Well, pioneers will say we are late in the gainsaying. No we were not the naysayers. No it is not a holy jehad. No, Pope Benedict has no request to bless this revolution. No it is not the Book of Judas. No selling religion hasn’t gone digital. Phew, that’s another billion. Close. As April draws to a close, statistics say Twitter would have added 1 more billion to its 16 billion kitty from SMS alone.

Yes. And that news on the twitter blog is a good one, a great one and one that makes me wish I was a Cloudhopper. Twitter has finally started using the cash in the vain hope that it is ahead of the monetization of internet curve and thus people wil eventuually pay it in enough premium to cover now the third year of back breaking costs. The Cloudhopper purchase closely follows Tweetie and makes its Third party developers an integral part of Twitter.

We have said it before and we will say it again. It is time that all the tweeting , now available in the Library of Congress archives are a blessed source of will and wisdom that are sure to turn the world of digital media, social media and advertising in a tizzy.

Online advertising has also scored a neat $23 billion in advertising in 2009 according to a hat tip from the New York Times. 47% growth in Display ads, 38% in Video ads and search is still around. Well next year hopefully it will be Twitter’s promoted tweets there with a meaningful percentage and from our personal predictions, the search category would have mrphed into other pieces., incl the Apple iPad platform and maybe once Tweets count someone would have a percentage for Facebook as well.

Why am I rambling about that? Because a lot of people incl Accenture and Mckinsey have employed pioneers, our valley has gone down hooking them up and they all wanted to see a little more digital in our life. And that’s all Marketing, right! All those solo moments without advertising would also be sponsored by your refrigerator maybe. But the point is that magazine advertising scored less than $20 billion in the same year in the US. And that is where we plan to use everyone’s common decision. We think Marketing Budgets will be at least 30% Digital in a few years. And for the World’s Top 100 brands, more of that would be social and of course meaningful sponsorships would be most of the other stuff. See?

Filed under Digital Media, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter Tagged with Digital, Digital Media, Facebook, Online Advertising, Social Media, Twitter