Brands are now owned by the social consumer.

PepsiCo announced on Friday that it would no longer use an ingredient in Gatorade in response to an online petition that attracted more than 200,000 signatures from 15 year old Sarah Kavanagh.

When it comes to building relationships with consumers, social media has become a pivotal component, and we as marketers often talk about how the consumer ultimately is the owner of the brand message within these channels. As I like to say, the ultimate compliment to any brand is to allow the consumer to be the 'programmer of your network'. When you think about it, no matter how large the marketing budget of the brand, it cannot drown out the voice of the consumer. In other words, your consumer's voice actually 'outspends' your brand - so embrace it.

But this goes beyond marketing. We have always spoken in context of marketing and brand influence, but we have yet to realize that the conversation actually allows the consumer to influence the development of the product itself. I am convinced that this is just the beginning. Pepsico made the fatal mistake of announcing that the ingredient that is being removed from Gatorade, brominated vegetable oil, which is actually banned as a food ingredient in Japan and the European Union, will actually remain in some of its other large brands like Mountain Dew - I cannot wait until the fans get hold of that one! Studies suggest possible side effects include neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones.

Here's the deal, we all have much more information at our fingertips these days. Brand owners in both the product and marketing departments need to stop talking down to their consumers and embrace them as true partners. Realize that the consumer has a stake and interest in the development and evolution of product and not just the message.

Now lets see if we can create something meaningful together.

Link to the complete article in the New York Times: PepsiCo Will Halt Use of Additive in Gatorade

 

Posted via email from Jared Hendler

Social TV, the Second Screen and the Opportunity for PR.

62% of consumers use social media while watching TV on a weekly basis. This fact is stunning and an increase of 18% over last year, according to the results from the annual Ericsson ConsumerLab study. While folks may not all be chatting about the content on their big screen, 25% of the 65% are - and that's still a big and growing %.  For a summary of the study, go here.

How many of us have texted our friends while watching a broadcast show, a live presidential speech or a sporting event? What about the chatter around those Super Bowl commercials? With Social TV, the opportunities to connect with others outside of our direct social networks around things we love are endless. The ability for our clients to do the same, in real-time, is there. I could even see the re-imagining of the commercial as a real-time call to action to engage. Simply connecting with a larger audience around the breaks within major events such as the Super Bowl or The Oscars brings endless opportunities, especially if curated around carefully promoted search terms and hashtags.

And more proof-points are coming our way. The Council for Research Excellence (CRE) will be conducting a new study to determine the impact of social media activity on television viewing. Keller Fay Group, Nielsen, Nielsen Life360, NM Incite, and Bluefin Labs have all agreed to participate in conducting the study. It will consist of three different components: A quantitative survey conducted by consulting firm Keller Fay Group of up to 1,600 participants recruited by Nielsen, all checking in multiple times per day over the course of a week via a mobile app; a social media analytics project from NM Incite, with the social TV analytics provided by Bluefin Labs; and ethnographies provided by Nielsen Life360, where 200 panelists will record media usage for seven days using their own smartphones. Comprehensive it is!

And there is plenty to research as Second Screen Social TV offerings are well underway. Here are a few that I have been tracking:

Yahoo was the first and most vocal with their easy-to-use IntoNow tablet app. While watching TV, the app recognizes the content through sound recognition and conveniently pulls up all the social streams around that particular piece of content all in real time.

YouToo.com (a social TV company) enables folks to record Video messages that then have the chance to appear in conjunction with the broadcast show. One example is Ricki Lake's new daytime talk show which will be accompanied by its very own social network, hosted by YouToo to allow users to record videos in response to on-air topics, which if approved by producers, could show up on later broadcasts.

UK-based social TV company Zeebox will be launching in the US soon and is expected to announce a deal with Comcast along with Time Warner Cable. It will provide both cable operators access to its social TV technology for use within their existing mobile apps, as well as launch its own app in the market. Zeebox's mobile app allows TV viewers to see what their friends are watching, follow social conversations and interact with others around shows, access additional information on a program, and has an m-commerce capability that allows users to buy things they see on TV.

Mass Relevance has teamed up with Turner Sports to launch The 13th Man, a new social/second-screen tool tied to the 2012 Ryder Cup. Available on the tournament's website, the social tool will allow users to access fan conversations and reactions in real-time during the Cup over the next five days.

VH1's Love & Hip Hop:Atlanta was the most social TV show (excluding sports) of the summer, according to data from Trendrr.TV. On average, the show generated more than double the social interactions per episode vs. the second-most social summer series. Females were responsible for 67% of all social interactions related to the show. Behind Love & Hip Hop Atlanta, the other top shows/genres for SocialTV are:

• The Bad Girls Club (Oxygen)
• Keeping Up with the Kardashians (E!).
  
• Sports programming dominated social TV as the end of the NBA Playoffs on TNT and ESPN generated 4.4 million social media comments and interactions; ESPN's coverage of Euro 2012 brought in 25 million social interactions; and NBC's Olympic coverage generated 28 million social interactions.
• The top three dramas were Pretty Little Liars (ABC Family), Teen Wolf (MTV), and True Blood (HBO).
• Excluding Olympic and other sports-related networks, BET, MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, and ABC Family were the most social cable networks this summer.
• Discovery's Shark Week brought in more than 4.3 million social interactions during that one week in August.

For those entertainment companies that have yet to get into the action, mPortal has released a new set of social TV APIs that are designed to help content and service providers build second-screen apps for connected devices. The APIs allow providers to develop an interactive experience that connects audiences with friends across selected social networks while giving insight into individuals' unique viewing preferences.

Given the expanding opportunities to engage with the content that we crave, the Public Relations industry is in a great position to help brands and organizations connect in real time through a medium that used to be a one-way, static affair. Truthfully I don't see it going any other way. As with traditional social media, if you are not involved in the conversation, it moves on without you and the entertainment industry cannot afford to let that happen.

And then there is something else to consider - the fact that mobile is engaging us in ways that may exceed the immersive experience of TV and the fact that mobile devices are what we use when we engage in Social TV. I really loved this post by Matt Cohler from Benchmark Capital: Mobile Will Grab TV Advertising’s Crown.

For those of you who are joining us for Social Media Week this week in Los Angeles, the entertainment capitol of the world, I'd love to know how you plan on using the technologies at your disposal to connect with an audience that is clearly passionate about the content you are producing.

Posted via email from Jared Hendler

The problem with Google+

Google has often competed in markets it had no long term interest in participating in, just for the sake of drawing attention to or advancing a specific area for the overall benefit of search. That is not the case here. Personal data is sorely needed for search to evolve to the next level and deliver results that are more relevant to individual needs and interests. Google is late to the game and badly needs a social win. 

When Facebook crept up and stole MySpace, it was still early. Facebook realized the value of real friends vs an endless accumulation of connections to folks you did not know. Much has happened within social platforms since. Geotagging, e-commerce, currency, gaming, the ability to follow strangers sans-permission, targetted advertising, predictive search and the beggining of what is now evolving towards advanced government regulatory intervention surrounding the often gray areas of privacy.

In other worlds the 'Beta' period for social is over. Folks on all sides have deep experience and opinions as to how the tools work along with expectations as to how they want to engage with them. The players involved have deep pockets and influence and one could argue that the features listed above are pretty much becoming the greens-fee - a commodities list easily replicated.

So, what matters most? The size and quality of community. Facebook is larger than most countries in population. In order for a citizen of any country to want to immigrate over to that of another, you need a combination of 'things are pretty bad at home', combined with 'have you seen what you can do over there?' in order to feel as if your life will be infinitely richer and better tied to your community in order to justify defection or the need to carry multiple passports.

While Google+ is growing quickly, it posseses none of these qualities. Certainly not in functionality after the latest Facebook developments, nor in quality of voice. Most active users are those of us in the industry talking to ourselves. A great tool for us, but as the general population comes on board I become embarrassed for having invited my friends after having heard too many of them tell me they 'don't get it', and that the conversations are not relevant to them. Now, while that may change, there is still not enough reason to immigrate and carry 2 passports. For most folks 1 is already too much to manage...let's not forget about LinkedIn or Twitter.

To my next point, who are you to be on Google+? As people, we naturally like to express the many different sides of our personality depending on where we are. From the langage we use, to the tone of our voices, work and play call for and bring out differenct sides of us. There are many other instances too; think about gaming and our creation of avatars, or our foray into finding the perfect mate amdist online dating communities. While circles was and still is a great concept allowing us to broadcast or speak to specific groups of people, I'll argue that it becomes very difficult to manage all the complex sides to our personalities meant for work and play within one communit. Facebook has also now greatly enhanced, and copied, circles via it's own smart lists.  Google+ forces us to generalize our own brand as we cannot easily separate our different personas.

Google has approached Google+ in the wrong way. It's gone top-down and sought to replicate and one-up the tools of current competitor communities. What it should do, is capitalize on what it has that the others do not have. Search data. If it could build a social graph reverse engineered to advance it's prime goal of organizing the worlds information, we may just all get a personalized version of that information and have a better reason to join.

For a more detailed analysis and additional viewpoint read this post from Mathew Ingram at GigaOM. 

Posted via email from Jared Hendler