Here is our latest Clippers commercial!
The idea behind this spot revolves around the game experience. There are few experiences like going to an NBA game in downtown Los Angeles. The excitement that surrounds the Clippers, the Staples Center, and the city of Los Angeles can be felt at every home game. We wanted to capture the experience from a spectators perspective. The energy felt at these games is truly awesome.
Would you be more likely to become a fan of something that your friends and family are fans of? Of course! Facebook knows this and they’re leveraging it. Today, a new feature is available to marketers that will allow targeted ads to display who in your network is a fan of the brand.
If you have a fan page and have struggled with growing your fan numbers, this might be the fix you’ve been waiting for. You already know that you could only target those who opted to become a fan of your brand, but now you can connect to others outside of your fan base through your fan networks. Let’s say that I am fan of Pepsi. If Pepsi wants to run an ad that connects with the Pepsi Fan Page, they could easily target me as an existing fan, but now, they’ll be able to reach out to my entire network of friends who will also see that I am a fan of Pepsi. The idea is the expand marketers reach, but also to allow brands to associate with individuals in hopes of bringing in new fans. Facebook has always been careful to keep networking at the center of its operation, and this type of approach will ensure that brands aren’t able to maliciously infiltrate the network. It’s believed that this new tool will allow fan pages to not only create larger numbers, but will allow them to create more meaningful conversations and connections with users are most likely to become valued customers.
For the official information published by Facebook, Click Here
What’s for dinner this Thanksgiving? A big pile of social media, that’s what!
This week NextBee Media released the findings from its annual holiday media survey and should we be surprised that social media spending is increasing? No, probably not, but what may surprise you is that 70% of the businesses surveyed said they are increasing their social media budgets by 18% while at the same time pulling back 8% from their traditional efforts. This is big for more than one reason.
First, social media spending is positioned to see its largest media buy ever. Call it the recession, call it going green, call it saving on postage, call it better targeting, call it whatever you’d like, the reality is that social media going to take on an incredibly important role this season for retailers. It’s believed that most consumers think they will find better deals or amazing coupons online, to respond to this companies are shifting their media strategies over to the more contextualized and highly indexed areas of social networks the single place where internet users are spending nearly 20% of their online time. Retailers hope to target these frugal shoppers with discounts, last minute promotions, and gift ideas.
Second, the fact that retailers are pulling back 8% of their traditional budgets is even more staggering. We are not talking about half a percent or even one percent, we’re talking nearly 1/10 of traditional budgets getting pulled during one of the most important advertising seasons of the year. It’s also believed that the majority of shoppers will have all their gifts purchased by December 7th this year which means shoppers are looking for discounts now.
This might be the big push social media marketing has been waiting for. The landscape of social media will change dramatically after this holiday season if retailers get the ROI they are looking for, but there is also fear among social networks that this new push will make social communities feel crowded by advertisments. We saw this happen with Myspace a few years ago when it was overrun by advertisers. Users jumped ship to Facebook and Twitter to escape the unchecked and unregulated spam that Myspace openly allowed at that time.
I’ll retouch on this topic once the dust settles in mid-January, but for now, all we can do is get our appetites, email accounts, and status updates ready for the sea of advertisments coming by way of our favorite social networks this Thanksgiving.
A great advertising campaign can be a wonderful thing for a company. The best ones get people talking, get them in stores, and get them in the purchase funnel. Yes, a well thought out, carefully executed campaign can be a great thing. There’s another piece of marketing that many advertisers overlook: customer service. Customer service can reinforce an already great campaign, or it can make all your hard work worth nothing.
Here’s a question: What will have more of an impact on your customers? Motivating, memorable, and creative ads or negative consumer feedback? Chances are your consumers will remember your ads and they may even remember them in a positive way, but if negative consumer feedback is polluting the air, your targets will be less likely to respond to your advertising. This may seem obvious and elementary, but even the largest of companies have over looked this.
The cellphone industry is full of these scenarios right now. Many companies are producing some great ads, but their customer service is so bad that the great ads are almost having a negative affect. These ads lead consumers to believe something about the company and have an expectation of the type of service they will be receiving if they join a cell plan. If their expectations aren’t met, there might be a painful backlash of negativity, one that might even spread to existing customers, causing them to pick-up and leave for another provider. Today, one carrier known for “can you hear me now?” announced that it is doubling its cancellation fee, now up to $350! This will cause new customers to think twice before inking a contract. Other providers are closing stores left and right only to have third party retailers that occupy small kiosks at malls take over the sale of their hardware. A national survey was taken over the spring showing that only 40% of users are satisfied with their cell service, while 80% said they would change providers today if they did not have to pay a penalty. It does not appear that these clever “more bars, it’s the network” type of ads are delivering on their promises.
The opposite can be said for OfficeMax, who has received the SQM Highest Customer Satisfaction Award this month. This award is given to companies with the highest overall customer service satisfaction rating. Still the office supply chain has been facing serious financial trouble. Partly due to the economy, it appears that OfficeMax is in trouble of not turning a profit in the next 12 months. OfficeMax has also not done any heavy advertising and has been beat out by the clever Easy Button ads of Staples.
When looking at how to best build your business, it’s important to realize that advertising is only a piece of the pie. By taking a close look at everything from price structure, to online efforts, to traditional media, to brand positioning, to customer interaction, you must understand that even the best ad is not the only thing that will keep your current customers around. A great strategy must come first, one that encompasses all aspects of your business and how consumers perceive your brand.
