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Sunday, October 19, 2008

Social media

I attended Edelman's New Media Academic Summit in Chicago in June of this year, and here are some of the stories told at the conference about social networking and social media. The biggest story, however, might be called the elephant in the room: evaluation and measurement. How do we measure these efforts in social networks? Now that we can "see" how people share information about products (with some encouragement from brands), what does that really mean?

SARA LEE
This summer, I heard Jon Harris, senior vice president of global communications for Sara Lee, talk about his company's use of social media for the "Joy of Lunchboxes" campaign.

The PR effort for this consumer goods company involved Sara Lee Soft and Smooth whole grain white bread. Partnering with Cafe Mom, a social networking site, Sara Lee attracted 28,000 moms to participate in polling, garnered 650,000 impressions, with 753 moms making Sara Lee their friend and 350 pledging to do "the switcheroo." Twelve percent of these moms who received free bread made journal entries about the tasting experience. He said Sara Lee was focused on reputation, success, growth, and sales. Using social networks helps the company in "connecting (with customers) and solidifying relationships."

BRITA WATER FILTERS
Drew McGowan works for the Clorox Company, owner of Brita Water Filters. For that brand, the company uses the "Filter for Good" site to promote filtered water, rather than bottled water, which dumps too many plastic bottles into landfills.

Bloggers were a huge part of this campaign: health bloggers, environmental bloggers, and so-called "mommy" bloggers. The company tracked seven to eight posts daily as part of driving people to the web site that encourages people to think "tap water is our friend." As of June 2008, 75,000 people had taken the pledge to use filtered water.

The company also teamed up with Josh Dorfman, the "lazy environmentalist," who wrote a book of that title in 2007. This was "only" a PR campaign on the web, with no paid advertising support. All results came from PR, in terms of driving sales of water filters. The site is being updated to be more like a social networking space.

Still don't know how Clorox will overcome its obvious "evil" branding dimensions, but I guess Brita and Burt's Bees will help a little. Maybe the "greater good" slogan will sink in, but how do you get a company to actually stop making some products? Sure, many companies shift slightly to fuzzier products, but do they ever drop things completely? That rarely happens, unless government steps in.

STARBUCKS
Starbucks Corp. wanted two sites for co-creating ideas with partners (its employees) and customers, so it established a customer-facing site and a partner-facing site. The main customer site is Mystarbucksidea.com. At these sites, people may share, vote, discuss, and see ideas after establishing an account.

Alexandra Wheeler, director of digital strategies who seemed to drink Starbucks 24/7 at the conference but stayed incredibly calm, said that at first, company executives weren't too keen on this idea. At the time of the June conference, the top five ideas at the customer-facing site were all about vegan options needed at Starbucks. "Vegan blogs were driving people to the Starbuck site," Wheeler said.

A year ago, executives wouldn't have wanted to know this information. Now, Wheeler said, executives saw customers as "idea partners" and brought ideas from these web sites to meetings, trying to get ahead of the messages and addressing the issues.

These ideas, or "conversation starters," seemed to me to be the best examples of what social media can really be--a link from the executive suites of companies into the brains of customers and the public in general. Executive suites are privileged and isolated places--they need reality to visit every once in a while.

POLITICS
Some of the discussion at the New Media Academic Summit centered on political campaigns and their uses of social networking and the internet in general.

Tubethevote.com: Displays user-generated videos, Twitter sites, news links and more to provide information about both major candidates.

YouTube videos: One of the most watched (more than 5 million views so far) is the remix of Ridley Scott's 1984 Apple commercial from the Super Bowl, with images of Hillary Clinton. At the end is an O-shaped Apple; the video was made by an Obama volunteer.

At the Huffington Post, users share journal notes, blogs, and videos in a space called "Off the Bus," where anyone can report on the campaigns. This site is where the Mayhill Fowler posted her cellphone video of Obama making his "bitter" voter remarks in San Francisco. She has another post there today, about the changing demographics of Colorado.

"The best campaign may be the one that inspires the best user-generated content," said Michael Cornfield, prof at GWU's grad school of political management.

Other efforts: There is a Barack Obama social network; John McCain has given legendary access to bloggers, not just journalists; Mitt Romney's campaign sponsored a "create your own ad" contest; Ron Paul's campaign developed live streaming video available to show fundraising by his community, showing transparency and offering access to grassroots suggestions by his supporters at ronpaulgraphs.com.

Yes, there have been problems, too. Early on, when a fan of Obama set up a MySpace page in 2004, it quickly had 130,000 friends. But Obama's campaign handlers alienated this fan with too many demands, and MySpace pulled the page down. Another problem: ABC News and Facebook had joint activity for viewers of one of the primary debates with 110,000 comments real time (but no indexing, so impossible to follow).

It's best when online and off-line activities are in sync, with consideration of the best practices for building relationships.