Who is in control of your brand?

Priscilla from MySpace just dropped off these invites to the FREE MySpace Music launch concert on St Kilda Rd, Melbourne. They’re clearly banking a lot on their music offering with some serious headlines. For MySpace’s sake I hope they put more focus on their music offering as it’s their only real strong offering, and what they were built on.

Although, all that considered, I don’t totally get how they’re launching MySpace Music? Haven’t they been doing music for years?

Are you going?

FOX provided 4 case studies for reference, I was not involved in them I simply want to share them with you. I’ve also included a case study on the highly debated Pimp My Kettle Campaign at the bottom of this post.

The four presos cover campaigns Red Bull, My Name is Earl, Crest & Tourism Australia. They’re very basic examples, and difficult to measure ROI but it does illustrate the potential.

I have more case studies from various projects, get in touch if you’d like to get your hands on any.

This campaign is a personal favourite of mine as ‘the industry’ (whoever that is) got so stuck into it so hardcore, yet the campaign actually worked. A friend of mine was involved in the research and said that the focus groups showed that there was an increased perception of quality taste after the campaign, along with the stats in the YouTube video.

Twitter is certainly raising the profile of social media, although marketers/brands don’t know what it is, it does get them asking questions – which is a win for social media generally.

However, I and lots of other pessimists doubt Twitter’s phenomenal growth and how it’s changed the world. For me it’s profile is partly due to it’s value to the publishing community – basically it helps journalists find stories quick, which makes their lives easier, so they write about it lots.

However, a Hubspot report, which surveyed 4.5 million Twitter accounts gives us a good indication of the uptake of the new craze.

Some of the key stats from the study are:

• Currently 32.1M users, up from 1.6M 12 months ago
• The average user has tweeted 119.34 times in total
• The average user has a following-to-follower ratio of .7738
• 24.14% of users have a bio in their profile
• 31.32% of users have a location in their profile
• 20.21% of users have a homepage URL in their profile
• 45.12% of users have tweeted at least once
• 47.29% of users have at least one follower
• 44.50% of users are following at least one account
• You can read more here: http://blog.hubspot.com/Portals/249/sotwitter09.pdf

On the surface there’s been a growth in user-base from 1.6M (12 mths ago) to 32.1M (now) – a 2000% increase in 12 months – not bad. But as we all know not all the users are active, so lets consider the inactive accounts – inactive account could be defined many ways, I’m using ‘have not followed anyone’ as a broad measure. Hubspot tells us that 55.5% of people aren’t following anyone, which brings the active user-base down to 14.2M.

Assuming all of the original 1.6M users were ‘active’ the growth year on year is 787%. Now which ever way you want to skin that, or define ‘inactive’ that’s still impressive growth. Maybe it’s not as big as Facebook or MySpace, but how often do MySpace & Facebook get press based on their ‘active users’?

I still believe that Twitter is an over-hyped application, however, it is changing the game – and making marketers & businesses sit up and atleast ask questions.

Other discussions on the report

• GigaOm: Ironic But True – Many on Twitter are Just Silent
• SFGafe: Most Twitter Users are less than Twitter-obsessed
• VentureBeat: Twitter Study Finds More Lurkers than Active Users
• Mashable: Are Twitter Users Inactive?

This landed in my Inbox yesterday, it’s silly although somewhat true. I know I fall into one of these categories… Have they missed out any?

There is sometimes a difference between how you want to be perceived, the way you actually are AND the way you are actually perceived.

This has been happening for years in advertising. Organisation wants people to LOVE organisation, people think otherwise. McDonalds wants to represent family/healthy, people thing not many positive things. Coke wants to be perceived as fun, I perceive them as unhealthy….

So here’s some fun…

Photo	Type	They want you to think	The truth
	Blurry	Artistic	Has acne, possibly moustache if female
	Anime	Eccentric, possibly Japanese	Computer programmer
	Holding some sort of alcoholic beverage	Fun, laid back	There has never been a photograph taken of them where they weren’t holding an alcoholic beverage
	Very closely cropped	Enigmatic	Fat
	Dude jamming on guitar	He’s in a popular band and rocks out all the time	Unemployed
	Close-up of breasts, usually in bustier	Sexy and naughty	Fat
	Face at strange, usually downward, angle	Eccentric, possibly supermodel	Unattractive; this is the only good picture of them ever taken
	Dark, brooding	Doesn’t care	Dangerous, possibly a pirate
	Cartoon character such as Bugs Bunny or Tweety Bird	Cute, playful	Immature, probably fat
	Guy with beard sitting on couch	Sits on the couch a lot, has a beard	Sits on the couch a lot, has a beard

Jye Smith, over at ‘a digital perspective‘ has posted Ravi Prasad’s views on the highlights of 2008 and what the future brings for digital media.

I agree with many of his predictions, but for me the key points of his post are:

1. Traditional agencies still aren’t getting it

I was left with the impression that many major agencies, brands and media groups don’t yet ‘get it’ or are resistant to the evolution of the media space – this resistance was sometimes at very senior levels and within groups of powerful decision makers. For me, encountering this resistance raised some interesting questions, but I’ll come back to this at the end

2. Marketers, brands and agencies are slower than consumers

The biggest lesson to be learnt is that by 2013 advertising agencies, brands and marketers will have caught up to what consumers were doing in 2009.

3. Follow the consumers, Facebook and MySpace are just the start, more are on their way

In 2009, look for more platforms defined by target market demographics (and dispositions) and less by USPs or other brand propositions.

Social media, in general will evolve with speed and we’ll see a lot of new utility from existing platforms.

4. TV will continue to play catch-up with ABC leading the charge

By 2013, TV networks are in full blown crisis.

Video sharing platforms will now have a bigger share of audience than some networks.

Networks would have turned to a raft of different things to stop the haemorrhaging. All those cool things that the ABC Digital department are doing (think of what they did with programs like the Gruen Transfer to foster online interaction with the show) will be standard practice across most of the programming on most networks – including drama.

5. And his final wrap-up of what 2013 will look like

Given resistance to change from senior brands, agencies and marketers, and the inevitable necessity that change has to happen, I think my final prediction is this: by 2013 there will be a massive change in leadership underway amongst senior brands, agencies and marketers. This will be driven by a crisis or relevancy. We will see, among other things, entirely new classes of marketing, strategic and creative businesses.

You can read the full article here

http://jyesmith.com/a-digital-perspective-ravi-prasad-head-of-strategy-topia/2008/12/16/