Quote unquote, “Lingering longer than a kiss under the mistletoe and more useful than a dodgy jumper, Most Contagious 2009 is our free review of the most talked-about trends and technologies to have influenced global marketing over the past 12 months. Unlike H1N1, feel free to pass on.” Everything in it is really strong, except maybe the Puma Index, which for me is too unrelated (sportswear/stock market). If your agency doesn’t subscribe to Contagious – it’s only £985 per annum – you may as well dump it and call the Kookmeyer Institute. We’ve never had this magazine but at least you won’t be paying all those ‘expensive agency overheads’.
More essential reading from Razorfish on the way consumers engage with brands in the digital world. One of the most interesting findings was that 44% of ‘connected consumers’ follow a brand on Twitter for exclusive deals or offers. In the words of the authors, “The myth of marketing-free social spaces is just that.” I guess this explains Dell’s amazing success on the site. It also re-affirms to me that there is no one recipe for success on Twitter – you need a mish-mash of offers, insights, breaking news, engagement and customer service delivered in a more friendly way than most corporate comms. What might work for one brand might not for another.
You know, we get a lot of email from people, clients and agencies, guys like Fred Wilson and the dairy owner next door, all asking about the state of play in social media right now. Our standard reply is, “Give us $5,000 and we’ll look into it.” But now, thanks to an email from Andy Monk at the NZRB, I can point them to “The State of Social Media” and they don’t have to spend a cent. It’s the executive summary of a new report put out by MarketingProfs, which is worth a quick flick through. These guys have interviewed 5,000 marketers so the sample size is pretty good. Pre-order the full report – all 200 pages – before 30 November and you can SAVE US$200!
Small to medium sized business owners rejoice: it’s normal not to get 100% open rates from your email campaigns. If you need proof, take a look at this report from Sign-Up.To, which breaks down open rates, clicks and unsubscribes by business sector in the UK.
Attention all brands that strive to do rather than push: Razorfish has released its latest social influence marketing survey, which you can download now. The 58-page document makes great bedtime reading for valuable insights into a number of issues:
- Can Social Ads Do Better Than Display Ads?
- Viral Marketing through Social: No Free Lunch
- Have Social Graph, Will Travel
- Social Media: The Last Quarter Mile of Customer Relationship Management
- Ten Ways to Make the Twitterverse Work for You
Venture capitalist Fred Wilson (who has more than a few shares in Twitter) “predicts that at current growth rates, Twitter [and Facebook] will surpass Google [as a source of traffic] for many websites in the next year.” Wow. Find out what else he had to say at the 140 Characters Conference.
(Via TechCrunch)
That is the question for companies like Wal-Mart that create profiles only to abandon them soon after. If you’re in two minds about the next step for your brand, you might like to catch a recent post by Igor Beuker. It’s full of interesting titbits like the fact the H&M Hyves page now has 250,000 members, even though the company ignores it completely. There will always be exceptions to the norm like this one but, as Igor points out, you generally get out what you put in to online communities.
(Via ViralBlog)
Researchers at the Kookmeyer Institute deny the validity of all quantitative research unless said research finds in favour of creatives. With this in mind, it is with delight that we present Sally Cole’s ‘Creative Insight’s on Rich Media‘. Sally’s a business marketing manager at Google. Her main conclusion from an analysis of aggregate trends was that advertisers should use video and larger creative sizes for higher click-through rates. Hopefully this means the end of billboard artwork converted to 234×60 banner ads.
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