11 November 2011

Holy Trinity of Social Media Making - Actors vs. Concepts

Yesterday I went to check how the N2 social media hub is heating up after summer. Here few reflections of the hour and a half session of SoMe buzzing.

The hub started as always: you get there and find yourself in a middle of big room with only 10 anxious people in it. Then, sharply 2 minutes to five people rush to the event and soon it's too hot and heavy to breath. As one the fellows noted, people are in "the meeting manuscript mode" such like you get to the meeting, you attend the meeting and then you leave the meeting minding your other business. Yep, feel guilty!

Anyhow once again, the repertoire was entertaining and nicely bundled around one theme to which different actors bring insights. Yesterday, the focus was on what are the contributions of the holy trinity - media, advertising and digital agencies- to good SoMe marketing. 

From the very start the audience got best laughs of the simplifications over where digital advertising is at the moment: "Like us and win ..." is the easy option over challenging the customers' imagination. This is to say, firms are still buying customers rather than building a relationship which arises the dull question of what are the prospects of good marketing performance (awareness, differentiation, loyalty, phenomenal media coverage) when 50 other firms are using "the win the iPad 2" ?

Self-critical discussion also took off around the frames (budget and planning) within which SoMe monitoring and customer listening can actually succeed to impact marketing outcomes. In this sense, what are the possibilities to create ADHOC campaigns when treasury holder doesn't allow it as it's not planned?  Reactions, such like gin in a tin first aid transportation from Helsinki to Brighton as captured in Lonkero for People campaign from Hartwall last month, are not going happen too often as somebody rationalized. 




This is how the 2 week's first aid campaign started. What I would have wanted to see in the campaign pages was hooray for media coverage across countries - did it get any?


Continuing with the budget aspect further, heading off with this kind of reactive campaign is risky - what if it doesn't succeed? In this sense, budget must be flexible between both ends which holds that 'kill your darlings' is rather quick decision to avoid any further expenses. 

All of this (delivering triggering marketing content & social mechanics) finally comes to listening and understanding the customer. Today companies, projects and jobs are atomized to complex networks - often times the knowledge disappears in the chain. The company is orchestrating different agencies to deliver successful (SoMe) marketing for multiple brands: media buying, advertising design and finally those who actually build them together as the deliverable outocome. Agencies, on the other hand, are balancing between the threat of hyperspecialization and collaboration with competitors while dreaming of becoming a full house solutions partner. Orchestrating then again implies that the firm must hold the helicopter view of how different projects tune in the marketing strategy. 

Unfortunately, from industrial echoes organizations are still functioning through silos. In his sense, one might ask who is responsible for social media monitoring and how? If lucky, it's designated to one person or diced to one unit within a silo or even across silos. Not so good options could be that it's outsourced or it doesn't exist at all. Whatever the chosen option, the questions are: Do the people have listening skills? How the  information is moving across silos and different projects?

Often times the holy trinity of social media are though over channels where to be (Facebook/Twitter/Blogs) or what different concepts are involved in social media (technology/content/customers). For the firm though, it seems to be the mastering the different partners and actors involved doing it.

As for attending these small scale hubs and breakfast sessions, I highly recommend them as above all the presentations initiate good remarks and discussions in situ that are not present in the slides provided afterwords. Finnish networking then again... we can only for so long take lame excuses that it's a week day.

16 May 2011

Hooray for Pitches!

If anything MBL has been a pitch school. Pitching to lecturers, partners, strangers and friends. Learning from my own mistakes and from others'. I used to think that business school is a secure way of learning how to be in front of people and present whatever. This is true in a sense that during almost every course I've been doing just that. But this has nothing to do with pitching.




Pitching is about yourself. It's about making an impact, selling yourself and your ideas to different people and groups.  Polishing what is the best of you that you can offer as well as crystallizing what you believe in and envision. And believe me, there's no easy way of doing it other than having the drive to do it again and again. Ideas are just ideas and thoughts are nothing without action. And pitching is a never-ending process of YOU in action in oppose to just presenting.

When you have it all figured out for the VCs (what David Rose is talking about here) it comes down to the very last minute before standing in front of the audience. As a note to myself of all the sessions and great speakers from the past spring, I want to share few thoughts on that specific moment.

  • Remembering that audience likes movement rather than stick figures, the secret of strong voice and confident posture does not build from drawn back military shoulders but core stomach muscles. This gives a relaxed way of being and moving on stage. 
  • You're not presenting to get people to like you but to get them inspired of your idea. Pitching is not about winning the audience but communicating with them.
  • Listening is like a journey during which people think heaps of things: bills, taking the dog out, mails that they forgot to reply to, grocery shopping etc. But most importantly something that you said reminded them of something to which they can relate to. Do not get offended of the funny and negative faces in the audience that derive from this journey.
  • Think about all the mean questions beforehand so that you're prepared to counterarguments.
  • And at the very last minute when you think that you just can't do it remember the King's Speech even though you don't stammer.

So yeah, hooray for the pitches and enjoy! MBL teams will be presenting and pitching new service concepts in Masters of Arts Festival in Salmisaari this Wednesday. See you there!

31 March 2011

Measuring Social Media

I wouldn't have missed yesterday's N2 social media hub for anything. Hot topic of the day was measuring social media to which I have been eagerly focusing the past two years. As a  business it's new and evolving, but in everyday life an area where marketer needs to know one's stuff. Experts giving insights over the subject included Jari Jaanto representing both IRC-Galleria and IAB Finland, CEO Tommi Lehtonen from Whitevector & Digital Marketing Manager Jussi-Pekka Erkkola from Nokia.


When it comes to marketing and social media, the leading question is whether you can measure ROI for your campaign. Can traditional thinking of reach, frequency and return on investment work fully in the complex net of attitudes, motivations, associations, relationships, feelings and behavior? All of the speakers gave supporting answers but noted that it really depends on the product and whether its consumers are in social media. There is no winning formula that fits all but rather the success in social media should always be compared to firm's own business goals and past performance. What is our goal in raising awareness, discussion and sharing? Are we stimulating the viewers or engaging participants? What are our long term social media goals and how are they integrated to overall marketing strategy?


Another challenge with social media, in addition to accountability, is that there are so many metrics to choose from yet only some of them fit the specific needs of the firm, campaign or the uniqueness of one social medium. The time span is also important as usually campaigns and trends follow the long tail. The beauty of social media monitoring, however, is that you can follow the phases and act upon them. Even though consistency is the key in both monitoring and measuring, the ultimate advantage is that you act upon it whether it's customer support, brand management, changing your campaign core theme or observing weak signals. And acting requires understanding the qualitative side behind the numbers.  


Ultimately you're not measuring social media per se but your customers behaving and socializing within it. We all can jump around for skyrocketing sums of consumer responses but rarely have time to explore what explains the change and what does it mean for our strategy. Thus in addition to money talk, successful social media marketing should be measured also in terms of consumer behavior as Hoffman and Fodor point out. Social media marketing should aim to satisfy customers' needs to connect, create, consume and control. And in measuring marketers ought to know how to read the numbers behavior wise.


Overall the evening gave good insights from different angles from practical customer approach to the one of monitoring tool provider and finally to measurement standard development in the field. Let's stay tuned!


Finnish readers pls check the presentations here.

26 February 2011

How to Understand Social Media?

Last time I wrote about social media's status in marketing strategies, I stated that companies sort of know where to go but what and how are still obscure. The major social media channels are well known whilst gaining visibility and interaction are the challenge. Firms are desperate to find ways how to benefit from their communities across social media.  

There is no general way how to categorize social media. To me, social media are the people who share personal views and media content. On the next level, defition of online community doesn't equal the platform used but is made up from communications across activitites in various platforms. This definition is rather ubiquitous and abstract, and isn't enough alone. In the other end is a functional categorization by e.g. Kaplan and Haenlein (2009 ) who divide social media into six types:  collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds and virtual social worlds by comparing provided possibilities of self-presentation and social presence in a specific medium. Just place the word 'social' in front of news, videos aka Youtube and photos aka Flickr etc. Whereas understanding the purposes and functions of different platfroms is essential for a marketer to choose and use one, it says little about the meaning of the community i.e. the ultimate target firms want to interact with. 

So what are the effective means to reach communities in social media? Firstly, social media must be a part of the firm's promotion strategy and in line with other marketing actions, which Mangold and Faulds (2009) also emphasize. Integration is the key. This really is a problem, because firms are affraid of the fact that they can't control what happens in the virtual grapevine.  Thus in general they don't fully consider social media's possibilities and the meaning to their business. This results just in actions of presence in stead of idea of serving superior value to consumers.

Often times social media are sold to managers with the idea of it being so cheap. Wrong, social media are all around and choosing the best channels just for your business is crucial to focus your marketing resources as being social is everyday task. Being active is the key. This is also question of who is willing and has the know-how to socialize in the name of the brand. As noted earlier my post, in many cases the brand is taking a backseat when the intreaction within social media is personalized to the person representing the company as well. Being social and interacting with consumers also translates to consumer knowledge and openness. You must have a hunch what consumers and communities would like to hear and do whilts communicating it with common sense. Thus being interesting is the key to drive discussion and virality.

Mangold and Faulds (2009) have really good examples in their article how this is done in practice, check them out. Though, examples are dangerous in two ways: one size doesn't fit all and secondly somebody has already done it i.e. saturation. Nevertheless,  I'm going summarize main points of the exmaples. To begin with, there is no separation between online and real life consumer as the goal of any marketing activity is to drive sales. Thus, limiting or focusing all networking opportunites of like-minded individuals to social media is not necessary as the first rule of integration implies. Brand networking events that take place face-to-face are likely to strenhten and prosper community relationships that will continue also online. Providing incentives, such as contests, is a traditional way of integrating consumption activities and company/brand attachment online. Leveling up the experience to community is easilly done by including voting logic. At the moment gamification is the THING to consider, how you could engage and entertaing your consumers.  And last but least, linking to fans' blogs in company homepage is worth of considering, too. Laissez-faire attitude isn't enough in social media and enthroning examples of innovative fan stories etc. in various ways is important way of socializing in social media.


Check what academics are saying:
Kaplan A.M. and Haenlein M. (2009) Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Kelley School of Business, Indiana University.
Mangold G.W. and Faulds D.J. (2009) Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix. Kelley School of Business, Indiana University.

17 February 2011

Social Casual Gaming - What an Hilarious Misunderstanding

Series of clicking, stages, badges and helping co-players. A casual routine shared with friends. Entertainment. This is what more or less 40% of people use Facebook for. This is social casual gaming.


Tiina Zilliacus from Ironstar Helsinki  gave an introduction to social casual gaming industry in previous  N2's Social Media Hub, the new monthly arena for media professionals to discuss current topics and to mingle around.  The themes also covered content marketing รก la Vapa Media and the rationale of CRM - or Romantic CRM - in marketing served by Kari Tervonen from N2. To me and based on the amount of questions for others as well, Zilliacus' presentation really blew up the bank. 


MUAHAHAHHAHA! They are not REAL games! AHAHAHAHAA! Middle aged women and their game logic! Who would REALLY play Facebook games? But then again, we all have our odd habits. Usually they're hidden from friends but social games are quite the opposite when every task you make is posted on your wall. It's as okay to build a virtual farm or a bar in Facebook as it is to smash egg snatching pigs on a bus ride home. Social casual gaming seems to be an hilarious misunderstanding for the trendy ad people and hard core players. 

The numbers are serious business, though. According to AppData, at the moment the top three social games include CityVille, FarmVille and Texas HoldEm all by Zynga. CityVille, which was launched last December, has 96,153,837 monthly active users (MAU) whereas FarmVille still goes strong with half from that. That's loads of city cash or farm bucks.  

Thank God the customers are rational grown-up people! Pleaded Zilliacus when compared their game to HABBO which has been popular among youngsters and teens almost a decade. Surely the popularity of social gaming makes you re-think how to benefit from game dynamics and elements in your marketing, but there is no point to overlook teenagers' creativity. All the arenas in HABBO are user-generated and goods have a secondary market. That is more than clicking. However, as a new segment of players arises from Facebook users, also HABBO is ensuring it's new player acquisition with a Facebook app. 


Winds of change are blowing also in this new game business as developers have their own game going on with Facebook which is making Facebook credits a mandatory currency from the beginning of July 2011. Is it an inspiration or a headache?

16 February 2011

Behind The Scenes of Animation

My favorite animations since childhood have been Who Framed Roger RabbitThe Night Before Christmas and the good old Molletje. And now that I'm browsing IMDb's list, memories full my mind of escapes to the theater. First one ever was Aladdin with my big sister. Then, somehow, the parts changed and I became the cool auntie taking her kids to the movies. The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wall-E, Toy Stories and yes even Alvin and the Chipmunks. Ultimately, it is the story that satisfies the viewer's thirst for miracles but undoubtedly animation still takes my inner child to higher levels.

To find out how animations actually come alive before we hit the theaters, me and my fellows popped in to Anima, a Finnish animation production companyAnima is well present in Finnish TV: political satire Itsevaltiaat and sitcom Pasila probably ring a bell to most readers along with many commercials upon which Anima Boutique has had their hands on






However, the specific reason why we wanted to visit Anima was the amaze over how an award-winning 3D movie Niko and The Way to the Stars, which was sold over 120 countries, arised from a small Finnish company. In discussions with Production Manager Sini Lindberg, we went through issues from business to production along with specific techniques used, all in all get the idea what does it take to make animation movie. And let me tell ya - a lot.

The animation industry is highly competitive. No need to emphasize the freedom that stock exchanged studios, like Disney owned Pixar and DreamWorks which goal is to release two movies per year, have compared to  entrepreneurs. However, this doesn't mean that you can't compete with the big fishes. To achieve the quality set by the West, you just need to join forces on a broader level. 


Niko and The Way to the Stars was Anima's second 3D movie and naturally European level co-production with A.Film, Magma Films and alike. When compared to an in-house production, the creation of funding and production networks takes more time. And obviously, when the distribution of production is scattered all around Europe, the risks of errors increases the amount of iterations. Rendering doesn't turn out the way it's supposed to.  To notice that the snowball, which your figure was supposed to throw is missing actually starts a snowball effect to correct the error. Thus to succeed in complex co-production you need to have  spot-on management.




www.nikomovie.com



As usually in the movie business, sequels are the rule rather than exception. In animation, however, this has many advantages. In stead of the full process of modeling, designing and surfacing figures, the main characters are already existing and ready to be remolded to your imagination. In the limits of new script, you can probably re-use also some of the sets. All this enables faster overlapping production processes. To what extent this is benefited can be seen if Niko's next adventure is released.


It would have been interesting ponder upon how the marketing approaches used differ for a small production company/co-production and across different target markets.  Movie and TV business in general is the playground for transmedia storytelling and how this was used in Niko's case was out of our time available. But definitely something I'm going to look into if and when the sequel is coming up.

5 February 2011

Branding Finland

Finnish companies have been bashed over marketing skills for ages. And just on our flight back home from Amsterdam was I yet again reminded of this subject thanks to Monocle's latest issue (issue 39. vol 04). In its soft power survey, which concentrates on soft diplomacy and branding cultural icons, Finland ranked 9th after our Scandinavian counterparts Sweden (6th) and Denmark (7th). The fix summary concluded that even though Finland is notable for its design heritage, we could export our gems far more effectively.


Yes, we are design lovers. Needless to say that Aalto University carries the legacy of beloved Alvar Aalto and is on its journey of combining the state of art of design, business and technology. And taking it to another level by joining forces internationally with Aalto Tongji Design Factory. Not only on institutional and national level, we also have witnessed genius masterstrokes by individuals such as HEL YES! temporary 'pop-up' restaurant which operated in London last autumn. 




HEL YES! Check Esquire's review here.


Marketing is topical subject now as the design field is buzzing: Turku is the European Capital of Culture this year where Helsinki takes off as World's Design capital 2012 the following year. At the moment our marketing strategy seems to be exporting by importing tourists and visitors. This brings great opportunities to show the uniqueness of our country in the ethos of soft diplomacy.


So what kind of brand is Finland? Design, nature and technology driven no doubt. But what does this really mean? In stead of spoiling the fun by summarizing The Monocle Finland Survey 2010/11 included in the volume, I'm just going to link three examples to illustrate where we are coming from:



'What you see is what you get. We are a no-bullshit country.'

Alexander Stubb, Minister of Foreign Affairs, when asked how would he describe the Finnish mentality. More interesting opinions in his blog. And BTW, Finland spends 3.8% of its GDP on research and development - the second highest amount in the world.


'It's difficult for them because there aren't many 'real' jobs. But the young generation is incredibly enterprising and are starting projects spanning many different industries. There's a great sense of 'doing'.'


Comtemporary designer Harri Koskinen on how hard it is for young Finnish designers today.


'Finland is home. But it's always nice to get away once a year.'


Santa Clause, Logistics Expert, about his thoughts of homeland. Another example of black humor worthwhile to check is Rare Exports by Jalmari Helander, which also was in the top 3 of new Finnish movies.




From Finland with Love,


Saara