Brand – Gabriel Catalano®

Building a Passion Brand: Key Findings and Insights from our 2013 Global Advocacy Study – vía @socialogilvy

“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire” – Aristotle

When we think of how people express passion for a brand, do emotions trump reason?

We know brand advocacy is hugely important to making marketing more relevant and effective. And advocacy via social channels is especially valuable because of its tremendous potential to scale.

But what really drives people to express their passion for a brand through advocacy in social media? Our newest Social@Ogilvy research – the most comprehensive study of global social advocacy to date – analyzes millions of social brand mentions to help us better understand advocacy for brands online. The data – which includes about 7 million mentions of 20+ brands and 8 feature films across 4 countries including China, Brazil, UK and US – provide us with insights and clues on how to build brand advocacy.

Here are some key findings:

1) Brands are largely failing at driving advocacy in social media. Most brands are driving very low social advocacy from their satisfied customers. It’s estimated that less than 5% of satisfied customers advocate publicly for the brand on social channels. This “social advocacy gap” represents a huge opportunity to improve marketing’s efficiency and effectiveness.

2) Practicality trumps emotion. Overall, advocates in all four countries were more likely to talk about product features than benefits, cost (or deals/savings), customer service or ads.

3) True passion is rare. For most brands, the majority of mentions were casual. In the US, only 2 brands had over 50% of mentions falling in the most enthusiastic advocacy category (love, excitement, must-do or buy). And these 2 brands had even more enthusiastic advocacy than blockbuster movies like The Avengers and The Hunger Games.

Based on these findings, we’ve come up with 5 key recommendations for brands interested in tackling the social advocacy gap. Take a look through our study to learn more about how brands can turn advocacy into passion.

A special thanks to Mark Bonchek at Think Orbit, for providing some invaluable suggestions on an earlier draft of our study.

How to create a design style guide – thnxz to @CreativeBloQ

(Abstract… full article +INFO Creative Bloq )

A style guide shouldn’t read like the work of a control freak, but nor should it be vague and ambiguous. Paul Wyatt explains how to strike the right balance.

Here are (some of the best) tips for ensuring your style guide does the job right in ensuring others do it right.

It doesn’t have to be perfect

Obviously we’d all love to spend time and energy crafting the perfect design style guide for each project. But in the real world, that’s not always possible. If you’re up against a tight deadline and not able to create a style guide with lots of bells and whistles (and examples), be sure to include the most pertinent and helpful information about the brand or piece of work you’re created in the time you do have.

Full article +INFO 🙂

Essential elements

Start off with:

a written overview of the company it’s for
a rationale for the work carried out
information about logos; font usage; colour palette; tone of voice
photographic guides
collateral information

If you have enough time, it’s worth adding some examples of logo and typographic usage as well as links to master artwork/ brand collateral templates and helpful contacts within your agency or company.

Concentrate on the visible

Look around your workplace and you’ll (hopefully) see colleagues who look presentable and are nicely dressed. Quite possibly a large percentage of these people do not have matching pants and socks or bras and knickers. But who cares? You (hopefully) don’t get to see them. Similarly, in your style guide concentrate on the visible and the relevant. Try not to deep dive into creating colour palettes which then have sub colour palettes and then further sub, sub colour palettes which might never be used or seen.

Full article +INFO 🙂

Work with a copywriter

Big, bold words help energise and communicate brand values in an effective visual way

Work with a copywriter to energise and communicate the brand. This style guide potentially will be used client-side by the in-house creative team or sent out to other agencies to be applied in future work.

For your guide to be applied successfully it’s essential to communicate effectively in written form the brand spirit; the reason behind the work; what the guide is there for; and what the brand goals are that the creative using the guide should be mindful of.

Full article +INFO 🙂

Anticipate questions

At the end of the guide include relevant contacts and create a group email address should the reader have any queries about the guide and need to get in touch should there be something the guide does not explain. Although if you’ve included all the relevant details in your guide this should very rarely happen.

Also consider creating an FAQ as part of the guide and think about the top 20 questions a creative might ask about a brand when they first approach it. “I hate your logo. Do I have to use it?” is a question which isn’t allowed.

Create art-worked examples

Art worked header examples from the BBC visual language guide

Art-working up examples of creative templates can be a great way to showcase how the guide can be interpreted. Also consider supplying these files for download with the style guide.

How To Measure Your Loyalty Program’s Incremental ROI – vía @cmo_com

Prior to launching a loyalty program, smart marketers build ROI models…

Vía CMO.com
…that forecast incremental profits based on anticipated lifts across three key customer revenue variables: average order size, yearly purchase frequency, and yearly retention rates. These models make assumptions on funding, breakage, and participation rates to estimate results.

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS:

How can you tell what loyalty members would have spent if no program existed?
New customers are a particularly good segment to break out for high-level comparison.
The purest way to measure incremental lift is to randomly assign every existing and new customer to a control group.
Full article 🙂

For example, “Compare Members versus Nonmembers” section, we performed the following analysis:

• Identified every shopper, loyalty program member and nonmember that made at least one purchase over first three months of loyalty program. For the member group, the purchase had to be made within 24 hours of registering for the loyalty program.

How Brands Brace for #Crisis in the Social Media Age: The Playbook – thnxz @SocialOgilvy @willcaggiano

Written By

Rachel Caggiano

The recent hack of @AP and subsequent Wall Street panic slash Dow plunge has once again showed how an alarming event in social media can have a damaging effect.

All sorts of social media crises are on the rise – not just brands seeing their accounts hacked, but errant four-letter words uttered in official tweets, ill-thought hashtags used as “bashtags” by critics, mistreatment of highly vocal highly influential customers and tone-deaf communications during natural tragedies – just to name a few. Sadly, the majority of these sort of #fails could have been prevented with proper preparation on the brands’ part, according to research by the Altimeter Group.

We’ve witnessed first-hand the growing risk brands now face. We’ve seen how social has empowered everyone from the consumer watchdog to the “vocal minority” to the socialized activist group. Try picturing “United Breaks Guitars” or Motrin Moms or “Artic Ready” without social media and you simply can’t conjure the same effect. Social media has transmuted the news cycle – local news swiftly becomes a global story and the iPhone-wielding bystander spawns tomorrow’s front page.

Full article 🙂

So what is a brand to do when faced with a crisis? More importantly, how should a brand prepare for a crisis?

We set out to answer these questions and ended up writing “Our Playbook for Digital Crisis Management 3.0.” Born out of our global experience preparing for and responding to brand and corporate crises, it’s now part of our global training program.

How Much is a Facebook Fan Worth? thnxz to @MarketingPilgrm

If you’re a Facebook brand fan, you’re worth 28% more than you were only three years ago. Doesn’t that make you feel good, to know that your value is rising in the social media world? Right now, you’re averaging about $174 but some brands, like Levis, are ready to hang a much higher price tag around your neck.

Vía http://www.marketingpilgrim.com

Want to know which brands value you more than others? Syncapse has the answer:

(The third one down is Monster Energy Drink)

Young, hip brands such as Victoria’s Secret and H&M put the highest value on their Facebook Followers. Old standbys such as CocaCola and Nike, come in under the $100 mark.

Think Insights – thnxz @ThinkwithGoogle

http://google.com/think

KEY STATS

Gen C buying behavior

85^%

of Gen C relies on peer approvals for buying decisions

Engaging Generation C, November 2012.

Download

Mobile search conversions

55^%

of mobile search conversions happen within an hour

Google/Nielsen Life 360 Mobile Search Moments. Q4 2012.

Download

Auto consumers & brand loyalty

63^%

of auto consumers enter the market with a brand in mind, but only 20% will …

Compete/Polk/TNS. Constant Consideration: New Vehicle Path to Purchase. September 2012.

Download

See all stats

Construyendo branding en social media – gracias a @MkComunidad

Diseñar y construir una marca atractiva para la audiencia, es uno de los objetivos que toda estrategia de marketing en social media debería cumplir. Esto sólo se logrará comunicando a los usuarios más allá de los mensajes en sí mismos, es decir, no basta con informar sobre los beneficios y novedades de nuestra marca, o con publicar un post original, debemos saber transmitir la personalidad de nuestra firma en toda acción comunicativa.

Leer el artículo completo…! 🙂

1.Diferenciarse o morir

La diferenciación es tan necesaria en las acciones de branding, como en los demás aspectos de la estrategia empresarial. La personalidad de la marca será la causa, o no, de la fidelidad del cliente. Tu marca ha de ser única, personal e intransferible. El éxito de nuestro branding dependerá de nuestra capacidad para aunar las características y valores que queremos transmitir y las connotaciones distintivas por las que el público nos identifica.

Debemos ser conscientes de quiénes somos, conocer nuestras cualidades y debilidades, es el punto de partida para definir nuestra estrategia de comunicación y marketing en redessociales. El siguiente paso es preguntarnos qué queremos destacar de nuestra personalidad y trabajar en esa línea. Nuestros mensajes deben ser coherentes con la línea comunicativa que hemos predefinido.

Se trata de resaltar nuestro nombre de la manera más honesta y transparente, vinculándolo con una serie de valores que nos acerquen a nuestro público objetivo.

2.Estrategia integrada

Sin importar el número y el tipo de propiedades sociales con las que cuente la marca, todas deberán caminar en una misma línea con la intención de unificar su imagen y hacerla más fácil de identificar (esto no signfica que lo que se publica en una red debe aparecer en todas las demás). Se trata de reflejar una personalidad única para la marca en todos los mediossociales donde tengamos presencia, adaptándonos a la dinámica propia de cada plataforma.

Nuestra firma deberá trabajar cuidadosamente para mantener en todas sus acciones la misma identidad, algo que pocas empresas llevan a cabo.

3.Gratitud con los “incondicionales”

Cuando un nombre se encuentra en la construcción de su branding sus consumidores yseguidores “incondicionales” serán su arma más fuerte.

Es importante que las firmas tengan a estos incondicionales siempre a su lado, no sólo dando las gracias por sus atenciones, lealtad y compromiso, sino también demostrándoles lo importantes que resultan en la construcción de su marca.

4.Calidad vs Cantidad

Leer el artículo completo…! 🙂

Growing Social Brand Movements (recommended post) – thnxz to @socialogilvy

We wanted to better understand how big movements get. From the Obama presidential campaigns to the global environmental initiative, Earth Hour, to high-profile brand programs like Pepsi Refresh, we benchmarked “how big is big.” We also wanted to better understand the comparative level of engagement as measured by social actions (everything from tweets to shares to posts to views). Each of these actions reflect a higher degree of engagement from passives and while each can not be considered of equal value, we believe they can be assessed for broad comparative purposes.

A Sample of the Findings

Entertainment Phenomena, Political, Social and Brand Movements, fall into a descending order of magnitude.

Entertainment phenomena, like Justin Bieber and Gangnam Style, earn more than a billion social actions. Political campaigns, like the U.S. Presidential race garner hundreds of millions of social actions. Social and Brand Movements fall below these levels, often earning between five to ten million social actions.

View and download the white paper for the complete analysis.

When a Brand Asks for a Movement

From time to time, brand marketers want to explore what it would take to create a “movement” of some type or other around a product brand, corporate brand or issue.

Inspired by the traction that social and political movements are able to gain via the internet and social technologies, they would like to spark something big. Movements are causes that take off in some way. They become driven by the community and the activity far exceeds the investment put in by the organizer. Even popular content and memes like Harlem Shake and Gangnam Style have movement-like qualities. They seem to grow explosively with little to no management. While this is far different than a movement for a cause, it is an interesting benchmark.

Sometimes the brand desire to go “movement” is right-minded, often not. Driving movements behind product brands is hard. Often it smacks of being inauthentic or just plain selfish. A brand like TOMS Shoes’ might be an exception but I am not sure it qualifies as a movement so much as a brand with a social mission. Driving movements around brand-related issues (e.g., water conservation for a coffee brand) can be just plain hard work. It takes investment, adept behavioral economics and certainly a cause people can rally behind. Triggering mass support and action is an art and science, not to mention, a bit of luck.

Check out the white paper to see how different movements stack up and what are the winning qualities of movements that “go big.”

Building Social Movements for Brands from Social@Ogilvy

10 Properly Designed Promotional Campaigns on Facebook – thnxz @onextrapixel !

The new Facebook page layout also known as Timeline provides us with tons of opportunities to promote and advertise any content or products via visual means. Many brands grasped this idea long go – the corporate Facebook pages design is the key to a brand’s popularity and fans close engagement.

We’ve already examined best showcases of creative incorporation of brand design into social media. In addition to attractive business pages, brands also organize stand-alone campaigns on Facebook devoted to a new product launch, sales and important events such as company anniversaries.

Now it’s time to examine top 10 successful promo campaigns on Facebook that brilliantly integrated their appeal into a special design on their Facebook pages.

Full article & design examples! 🙂

10 Properly Designed Promo Campaigns on Facebook

First, let’s define the criteria of what significant elements make up a successfully designed Facebook campaign:

Cover photo: A cover photo is one of the best helpers to inform your audience about brand news and upcoming events. Some intricate details on their usage are listed below.
Timeline images: Timeline images include branded content, coupons, QR codes, etc. An unusual approach to distribute important content and info in the form of images on the social network increases fans’ engagement.
Milestones: A creative add-on is also able to constitute a harmonious design biosphere of a Facebook promo campaign.
Apps: Promo apps fit the overall design, educate or entertain the Facebook audience, they also inform about news, upcoming events or new services.
Events & Contests: Offline promotional meetings are an integral continuation of marketing activities in social media. Contests ensure maximum reach of the audience that will 100% include a fan’s friends there for broadening your potential audience.

If all these puzzle units merge together (or at least the chosen ones will be joined perfectly), you’ll get thousands of fans who will eye-worship your page and many loyal clients who will stream to your website or store, longing for a new product, service or special offer.

Now let’s look at some Facebook pages for the best design examples of promo campaigns and analyze their tricks.

Full article & design examples! 🙂

Study Findings and Industry Recommendations – thnxz @iab

The introduction of the new IAB Rising Stars (RS) – Billboard, Filmstrip, Portrait, Pushdown, Sidekick and Slider – in 2011 ushered in a new era in standard, brand-building display units. The larger, interactive palettes are an ideal vehicle for digital brand advertising at scale.

On the occasion of their two-year anniversary, Undertone surveyed its clients – brands and agencies – as well as publisher partners on key questions reltaed to awareness, sentiment, challenges and metrics. Our goal was to both gain a better understanding as well as create some actionable next steps for the industry to drive adoption of RS.

Key findings:
Continuar leyendo «Study Findings and Industry Recommendations – thnxz @iab»

“Users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information, but ignore (…) “jazz up” webpages.” Jakob Nielsen @NNgroup – @christianvasile

How to Use Images Successfully – Web Design Usability Guide
VIa 1stwebdesigner.com

Web Design Usability Guide – Dealing with Images

Indeed, users want to see photos on websites, but they want them to be relevant. They would prefer a webpage that doesn’t have visual images rather than a webpage that has lots of photos that just make it heavy and cluttered. The key in using images on websites, according to the study, is based on a few basic ideas:

Image fundamentals – size, composition, quality and exposure are four important things to look for in a good image. People actually look for quality in images, even the contrast makes a huge difference.
Effectiveness – if the picture creates excitement or interest, then it works. It is down to three characteristics:
- Emotional appeal – does the product in the picture look good and make the user want it?
- Rational appeal – does the image show the benefits of the product?
- and Brand appeal – does the picture fit your brand?
Transmitted message – this is about the image sending the right message to the website readers.
Anticipated user response – this is a bit more difficult to put into practice, but the basic idea behind it is that the picture should help decision-making and create a desire for the product. We will talk about this a bit later.

Purely decorative images tend to be ignored unconsciously by our brain. Like a radar, if the images are there only as a filler, the brain will ignore them. The study concluded that pictures and images of real people or real products are automatically categorized as important and are to be studied in detail by the human brain. If you have a personal blog, people would rather see your face than a drawing or a caricature. They want to see the face of the person communicating with them, it is a matter of trust and bonding.

If you own a company, it is a very good idea to take some time talking about the people behind it – using images. It gives a personal touch to an otherwise faceless company and people dig that. People actually want to know (or at least see) who the people are behind a company. If you can afford it, invest in a good photographer and try to stay away from stock pictures (especially from stock pictures that aren’t relevant to your content). It might cost a few bucks, but it will add a lot of value to your company website.

Several eye-tracking study show that the more detail your product images have, the better the results you will have. Yes, studio pictures of a big flat screen TV work just fine, but is just fine good enough for you? People want to see details, show them!

Full article 🙂 !

Quality and relevance

Below I will show you some results of different studies. You will see several websites marked with heat zones. The red areas indicate where the users’ eyes were mostly focused, while the blue areas show the exact opposite, indicating what is ignored or a turn-off for visitors.

Eye-tracking study on Adelphia’s website

Besides the fact that it is an incredibly outdated design, you can clearly see that none of the heat zones are on images. It is because all the images embedded in their webpage are purely fillers. Had they been using relevant pictures, the heat zones might have been a bit different, but for now it shows how much of a waste of space images are on their site.

Full article 🙂 !

Another good example can be seen below. New York Magazine’s restaurant section has also been part of the eye-tracking study and it shows that even if worldwide known chefs are featured in images, the quality is still important. So even if the pictures are somewhat relevant, low-contrast and small size images are simply ignored. Image quality is as important is the relevance of the image being used. There has to be a balance, where quality and relevance are the two guiding principles.

Eye-tracking on NY Mag’s website

Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice wrote an article entitled “Images as Obstacles” some years ago. The images above are courtesy of Peachpit and the amazing heads who published the study. Thank you for your tremendous work!

Guiding the user
Full article 🙂 !

Engagement Rate: A Metric You Can Count On // @socialbakers

When there are bugs reported in Facebook´s Reach metric, it´s always good to know that you have one metric you can rely on. Find out which one it is!

As you know, we’ve driven home the fact that brands’ should not just rely on one metric to measure their social media performance. We believe that all metrics must be taken into consideration when developing social media marketing strategies, including Fan Growth, posts from you and the Engagement Rate they generate, your users’ wall posts and the speed of your response.

However, since, in the last few months, bugs were discovered in the reach metric on Facebook, brands need to consider relying on a metric that is guaranteed to work and is publically comparable – Engagement.

Full article

Why is Engagement Rate the #1 Social Metric?

When we talk about Engagement, we are referring to the activity on your page, to fan interactions to your post types, etc. There are several types of Engagement metrics:

Interactions – Like, Comments, Shares, Replies, Rewteets, and so on.
Reach – the percentage of fans that have seen your post from your Page.
Engagement Rates – a formula for quantifying brands’ success

Engagement Rate is always relative to Page size. This means that brands with 1 M fans can still be compared to brands with 2 M fans, with unbiased results. Look what we did here – we compared the average post Engagement Rate over a 7 day and 30 day period of Lufthansa (1 240 236 fans) and KLM (2 940 250 fans). The graph shows that KLM has been more successful in engaging its audience over the past month on Facebook despite the fact that Lufthansa has a smaller Page size and should therefore find it easier to mobilize its fans. Also notice, that KLM has experienced quite a few fluctuations on a weekly basis whereas Lufthansa maintained a stable Engagement Rate.

Full article

Let Your Fans In: The Advantages of Open Facebook Walls // via socialbakers.com // @socialbakers

Since we first launched Socially Devoted, brands have really upped their games, increasing the responses to customer questions through social media platforms. We wondered why some brands still have closed walls.

Throughout 2012, as the value of social media and online customer care became apparent, we noticed that companies set up presence and started to focus on two-way communication. Several brands, such as Nivea Men USA and Whirlpool opened their Page walls that were previously closed. And it pays off! Whirlpool is Socially Devoted with a Response Rate of 82,42% and Nivea Men USA is almost there, responding to 64,29% of questions on Facebook.

Via socialbakers Social Media Statistics

Whirlpool opened its Facebook wall and now responds to 82.42% questions! Worth it!

In 2013 we see the smart brands focusing on the quality of relationships, competitive analysis and the consistency of data.

However some brands are still lagging behind and don’t even allow their customers to contact them via Facebook. These include Puma, Dolce & Gabbana and Blackberry. Altogether these brands do not allow a total of 15 979 004 fans to have a voice. Continuar leyendo «Let Your Fans In: The Advantages of Open Facebook Walls // via socialbakers.com // @socialbakers»

Improving Facebook Response Rates – Walmart Did it, How Can You? // Thnx to socialbakers.com

We’ve talked about how important it is for brands to be Socially Devoted. Well, some brands have taken the challenge and amped up their social media customer care!

When we first launched Socially Devoted, an industry standard that measures social media customer care, we were faced with dismal numbers. Overall, 70% of Facebook questions were ignored! However, after challenging brands to become more Socially Devoted, overall response rates increased from 30% in Q2 to 55% in Q4. We’d like to mention some brands that definitely have something to be proud about when it comes to social customer care.

Walmart Takes the Leap Toward Socially Devoted

Walmart has an incredibly active Facebook Page. Only a half a year ago they were ignoring 8 794 customer questions per quarter. It looks like their team really took up the challenge because in Q4 they left only 143 questions unanswered! Continuar leyendo «Improving Facebook Response Rates – Walmart Did it, How Can You? // Thnx to socialbakers.com»

The Most Socially Devoted Industries on Twitter

Since we launched Socially Devoted as an industry standard of social media customer care, we have been pleased to see brands making an extra effort to improve their Response Rates and Response Times – especially on Facebook.
Via socialbakers.com

But How Does Twitter Measure Up?

We’ve seen some improvement over the last three quarters in the Response Rates, especially in the Electronics and Alcohol industries. But once again, the top 3 in the ranking are dominated by the Finance, Airlines, and Telecom industries. This is great, considering that they are all service companies and should, therefore, be responsive to all kinds of inquiries from their customers.

Socially Devoted is a key measurement that can help brands to improve their success in social customer care. Even brands with high Engagement Rates should not ignore it; after all who can afford not to improve on customer satisfaction?

+ Full article