DOUG SCHUMACHER

experience designer + writer

paidmedia

Creativing :: Facebook, the accelerating mediascape, and some fantastic short short films

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About: “Creativing” is my weekly summary of the latest industry developments affecting new media creatives, strategists, and producers. It covers issues like the latest technologies, new campaigns, and industry trends. The content is primarily culled from Creativing.com, a social bookmarking site covering new media marketing.

With the holiday, it was a short week, although the people creating industry news apparently didn’t get the word, as it seems this week had more interesting developments than usual.

Surprise. Facebook is in the news.

Facebook is roaring back from the backlash earlier this year. The cover story of BusinessWeek is not to be missed. There are some good figures about the tightness of friend networks. As expected, there’s quite a gap between our Facebook friends and our “real-life” friends. While we may have a lot of Facebook friends, we really on stay in close communication with less than 5% of them.

But I think the article over-emphasizes the closeness of communication among friends. The broader network of people you stay in little touch with reminds me of Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, in which he states its often the people in the farthest reaches of your network that lead to impacting connections. And that’s the big opportunity for brands on socnets. I already know a lot of the brands my closest friends use. But it’s the outliers that can really introduce me to new products.

Dave Knox of P&G breaks the article down into several key points, including the study of “Paths of Influence”.

This study of social mapping is going to be massive, and should part a lot of the clouds around the value of these friends. BusinessWeek revisited this this topic in follow-up article to their cover story.

Don’t cry for paid media just yet

The social media buzz has extended well beyond it’s present impact, though. Paid media is still far and away where the bulk of spending is going. Let’s face it, most companies aren’t ready to toss out the sudden results of paid media traffic for longer-term word-of-mouth growth just yet.

So the current issue seems to be less about how social media is killing paid media, and more about how the two can be used in sync.

A recent study reiterates a theme that’s been building since the cross-media studies done by the IAB in the early 00’s: That media channels work far better when used together in a coordinated way. It’s a call for team work in a big way. So while the IAB demonstrated that online and print were more effective than just print, we now see that search and display are better when used together. The next logical step is the need for paid and social to get locked in. And my guess is that when they nail it down to numbers, the findings will blow away the previous studies. Just a hunch.

The growing need for speed

It’s no secret there’s a growing need for quicker response times in this business. This has been coming up again and again, from different directions.

Some of this is mandated by crisis management, like the recent Dominos video.

But most of it is simply the need to keep pace with the rapidly changing mediascape. Somewhere in the middle of Web 2.0, Internet technology finally went from geek chic to mainstream cool. Girls writing fashion blogs aren’t afraid to dive in and hack through a little WordPress code. Many of what we would consider normal consumers have looked behind the technology curtain, and embraced what they found.

Of course, businesses follow consumers. The challenge is that consumers are setting a pace you’d need an Indy car to keep up with. This was all summarized pointedly by Simon Clift, CMO of Unilever, when he said “We may be ahead of some of our competitors. But we’re most definitely behind consumers.” And keep in mind he’s at Unilever, one of the most forward-thinking marketing departments in the US.

It’s not surprising then that there are technological solutions springing up to address this need to keep up. Wildfire is one example worth noting. In short, it’s a way to set up a contest or promotion across a number of socnets with as little footwork as possible. No real coding involved. Fill in some forms, push a few buttons, and up goes the campaign.

Another brand that’s been around a few years but is getting more buzz lately is Ning, sort of a community in a box. I was surprised to see their monthly uniques at 4.7 million. Their distinction from other socnets was laid out in the interview with their CEO. When asked ‘How is Ning different from other social networking sites’?, she replied, “Most social networks are built around friendships, but Ning is built around interests.” Thus for marketers willing to forgo owning the community data, an admitted issue for many, they can utilize tools like Ning and WetPaint to go live more quickly. Again, without coding.

Although potential levelers, my opinion is that these types of solutions are good for agencies. They move the emphasis away from technical implementation, and (hopefully) place it on strategy, messaging, design, and optimization. The creative and insightful parts of the business.

It does smooth the path for clients to take things in-house. And that’s certainly going to be a concern for a lot of agencies, as Max Kalehoff delved into this week. But what I keep coming back to is, the ad business has never been about production. It’s always been about ideas. And reducing production requirements shouldn’t take that away from them. If anything, it emphasises what they’re good at.

Creative works worth checking out

Old Navy’s $1 Flip Flop Memorial Weekend Sale
This just seems simple and smart. Take a loss leader like flip flops, which they probably buy for about what the sale price is anyway, and practically give them away to make news. This story was all over the fashion blogs that weekend.I can’t imagine what they generated in press coverage — all of it reinforcing the message that Old Navy is a place for great value. In a bad economy, no less. Here, the promotion concept is the big idea. And of course, right next to those $1 flips are some more expensive shirts, shorts and shoes, which a lot of the customers will grab on their way to the cash register.

Twitter the TV Series
Somewhere between obvious and inevitable. The announcement was about as informative as Warner Bros. announding they’re going to make movies next year. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

Del Monte Using Community for New Product Ideas
I’ve stated that creative is primed for a rennaissance. I think research is on the same path. There’s so much conversation out there, it’s almost impossible NOT to have it impact product development. Del Monte set up a community for 300 of the most avid pet owners, and in what seems like a fairly quick process, came across a product idea that probably would have been laughed out of a marketing department brainstorming session. Dog food based around a bacon and egg breakfast.

Last Day Dream
Just watch this. It’s about 1.5 minutes and worth every second. A great demonstration of simple cinematography and short clips creating a powerful story line.

Sorry I’m Late

Just when you think stop motion has been done every which way. The camera position and resulting background is brilliant. Stay tuned till the credits roll for a breakdown of the production process. Another example of production that could have been done in the living room of a nice house, with a bunch of props from Ikea.

That’s my breakout for this week. As always, very open to any input on the format of Creativing.

Why creative is more important than ever in advertising.

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This week I gave a speech at the Facebook Global Sales Conference, up in Palo Alto, on the role of creativity in social media. I enjoyed meeting and hanging out with the Facebook team. A lot of energy and excitement going on there.

The theme for my presentation, on Google Docs here, is that social media is going to usher in a big demand for creativity in advertising.

The Power of Social Media

Recently there’s been some highly-illuminating information on the impact of social media. Firstly, we’re seeing social media driving a lot of traffic to sites. The average for this is 20% of a site’s visitors. That means for some sites, it’s significantly higher.

This is one of Google’s challenges. As a search tool, it’s far from perfect. And people are finding that their network is a more effective resource than Google, in many ways. Twitter’s ability to provide relevant search info quickly paints a similar story.

And when you think about it, of course your friends are going to be better at predicting what you’d like than a Google algorithm. That’s why they’re your friends. Friendships are based on shared interests.

But perhaps the ultimate proof of social media’s power is the almighty conversion. And here we’re seeing conversion numbers 2-4 times higher. That’s a remarkable leap in performance — a stat even a direct marketer can love.

Paid Media Isn’t Going Away

While social media is undeniably powerful, keep in mind that no matter how popular it gets this year, the overwhelming portion of ad spending will be paid media. And frankly, paid media will  be a big factor for a long time.

Paid media actually makes for a great partnership with social media. There are only a handful of sites that have risen to prominence without any paid media. And a lot of the so-called viral or social media success stories were heavily fueled by a paid media launch. That’s all fine. In fact, it’s the way it should be. Companies rarely have time for 100% organic viral growth. Sometimes you have to spike the punch.

The question then is, What’s the tactical relationship between paid and social media?

Turning Paid Impressions into Social Endorsements

So paid media can feed the social media monster. The question is, How?

Any social media campaign has one major requirement. That it be something people want to share. Without that, it’s not social. Just more stuff posted to the Web.

Having something share-worthy isn’t easy, as few products are what Seth Godin would call “purple cows” — products that generate their own word of mouth. Outside of entertainment properties, it’s hard to think of a category in which people watch the ads as a way of gaining product information.

So the ‘news factor’ has to come from somewhere.

A base level tactic is to include sharing features at every touchpoint of your campaign. Make it easier for people to take it social. This could be Facebook Connect and other types of universal logins on all your campaign assets — from websites to banners. But those are really more foundational tactics. And it also assumes that the ad or website we’re featuring has inherent news-worthiness. Not a likely situation.

Creatively-speaking, social media is a much more challenging environment. In my presentation to Facebook, I mentioned that there are a lot of paid media ads that most people would consider pretty bad from a messaging standpoint (think the Clapper, or the Snuggie), yet they’re still able to produce positive numbers. They’ll drive a certain level of traffic, some of which will convert to sales.

With paid media, the biggest requirement from the reader is to simply NOT skip or ignore the ad. Think about that. To ‘not’ receive a paid media placement, you have to do something. That’s ironic. With social media, there has to be some sort of action on some person’s behalf, to generate the endorsement.

That makes understanding the consumer more important than ever. Because you have to gauge what will interest them at a much deeper level. When you hit it, it’s extremely powerful, as the conversion rates are showing. But it’s not a level of creative thinking that you can simply phone in.

So the ‘creative’, whatever that may be, has to be something that will separate from the rest of the media noise. And that’s probably not an ad, unless it’s insanely funny.

Content-based creative, like video and Facebook apps, offer a lot of potential impact. But they’re going to have to respond to what will inevitably be a surge in similar campaigns. All vying for people’s endorsement.

So getting any sizeable reaction from viewers is going to require a big leap in creative over what everyone else is putting out there. After all, consumers aren’t going to increase their rates of endorsing. In fact, it’s going to decrease on a percentage basis as more and more companies swing for a social media hit.

In that environment, the creative will definitely be king. Outside of product development itself, it will be the only thing that can get a company into the conversation. But it’s going to take a lot of understanding, thinking, learning, and refining.

In short, it’s going to take a lot of creativity.