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.

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 á 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?

Behind The Scenes of Animation

My favorite animations since childhood have been Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The 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 company. Anima 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.

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

Amsterdam We Salut You!

Once upon a time (read 4.30 AM), group of media students packed their their bags and took off to Amsterdam. Not often do you have this kind of chance to get on a sponsored excursion to media agencies and Universities to mingle with inspiring professionals. Indeed, one huge benefit of the European education system is that the social distance between companies and students is small giving the chance to combine your academic background to real life experience and examples.

Visiting our industry partners', Sanoma and OMD, branch offices not only gave insights what the following year is going to be online publishing and consulting wise, but also showed how different the target groups are despite common challenges. For example, the Dutch prefer Twitter in oppose to Facebook in everyday socializing. The slow rise of Facebook can be explained by their own local competitor, Hyves, whereas in Finland the Facebook skyrocketed. Also, the Dutch are more active mobile users in comparison to Finns. This, how people use smartphones in their everyday life, is something I personally have to dig in to.

For our media service idea, the trip was perfect kick-off. We had exiting brainstorming session in Medialab which clarified our team's focus and gave good frame of reference to reflect on. Also, the PROJEKTENMARKT fair held by Utrecht  School of Arts was interesting game benchmarking wise. Especially the Jelly Reef was fun! The initial project cases were given from the business industry upon which the students started to build up their ideas. The amount of teams was overwhelming :)

Amsterdam is beautiful and fun city! In addition to strolling the streets and markets we crashed the restaurant scene with full army. Mussels, oysters, chips with mayo, cheese, cheese and cheese! However, ultimately it's the people that make or break the experience: the speakers and presenters, teachers and co-students. Thanks all!

Innovation - is it a figure?

To develop ideas, you need to be able to look at the same information everyone else does, and then organize it into a new and different pattern,  states Michalko in Thinkertoys. A Handbook of Business Creativity for the 90s. (1991). This has two important 'to be ables'. Firstly, to look at the same information that everyone else is watching. Secondly, to have motivation to organize it in a new way. 

I'm more of the first. From childhood I've been an observer and my mind free flows to different conclusions easily. Roughly put, I'm very good at analyzing information. The latter part of innovation, on the other hand, requires motivation to structure the new pattern more profoundly, i.e. by devoting to research and overcoming your own demons of questioning what is new and different. Processing the new as usually the first conclusions are just a hint of what is about to come.

This dualism pretty much defines also the MBL program. The first half we've been observing everyone else by doing netnography, analyzing and benchmarking. During this past fall, we've been also working with creativity, innovation, clarification and planning methods and tools to come up with hundreds of ideas in the MBL Creativity Workshops given by Piritta Kantojärvi from Grape People. 

Undoubtedly, more than ever we'll need these creativity tools next spring when we're all fail-fast in structuring our ideas to something new. As if anything, innovation is a process.

The media service ideas will be pitched the 16th of December (tomorrow!) for further business planning and mock-ups.

Future of Advertising Film

Traditionally advertising film has been the crown jewel of all advertising mainly thanks to TV's predominant role in people's lives. We all love to bash for and against the ad films. Sometimes, I even talk to the voice over out of annoyance when heading to the fridge whilst the commercial break.

But now due to digitalization the film is facing some serious challenges: web is becoming the number one channel, cost pressure affects production and the life cycle is becoming ever shorter. From advertiser's perspective, the change is not just adding the clip online or providing longer, more entertaining version of the brand story. It could be something like this.

Or like this.

Or even something like this, Area's Krisse B2B targeted campaign which was awarded couple of times last spring's Grand One digital marketing competition. Is the advertising film remediating? Or is the banner advertisement using more narratives and  becoming more interactive?

Few weeks ago, Sami Kankkunen from OMD also talked about the emergence of interactive banners at the Impacting the Bottom Line with Media Services seminar. People are witty  in avoiding the ad banners, but interactive ad clips are more pervasive in nature. Thus they are more efficient and hopefully more enjoyable and entertaining, too.

During the discussion over my own class presentation at Aalto roused two important notions concerning the future of ad film. Firstly, there's nothing more annoying than psychedelic sounds out of nowhere when checking e.g. news site. Thus the activation of ad film should be under freedom of choice to some extent. On the other hand, people have accepted that the free online content and advertisement walk hand in hand. Secondly, interface development (read iPad) is a huge opportunity to educate consumers to this kind of advertising. Who could deny that watching these interactive clips is part of the user experience and half of the fun?

Thanks again for the great speakers at the seminar and all of those who came to say hello during the poster sessions!