Revolver

At the cutting edge is the viral campaign; the short video clip that is so compelling much of an advertiser’s work is done for them when their prospective customers forward it to their contacts quickly building up an audience of millions.

A whole new industry has sprung up, dedicated to unravelling what makes viral ads infectious. GoViral, for instance, specialises in launching viral campaigns – in part by ”seeding” clips on the web in places where they are picked up by the online populace.

Consumers are becoming increasingly immune to mass marketing and advertising, so viral marketing offers something that doesn’t feel like they are being sold to, making them more receptive to the offer.

What once was much a matter of luck is slowly being transformed into a science. Jimmy Maymann, the group’s chairman, has built a polling system, ”which every campaign is taken through prior to launch in order ensure virality”.

The ideal campaign is edgy, surprising, original, erotic and emotional – and taps into popular culture, he says. His system attempts to quantify these elements.

Prime Example of a highly successful viral campaign is Nike.  Their  clip is one of the all time greatest virals ever, with more than 50 million views globally. Featuring world famous soccer star Ronaldinho hitting the crossbar no less than four times, without the ball touching the floor. The creative material is from Framfab, in Denmark. The product on display is the Nike R10 football boot. A massive discussion on whether the clip was actually real or computer edited drove millions of interested viewers to the campaign.

Framfab won two Gold Lions on the Cannes Lions Festival for the campaign. The other winning clip was The Chain, a user generated initiative, consisting of more than 500 user uploaded soccer sequences edited together as one long clip of soccer celebration.

Another strong campaign and a favourite of mine was the one with the John West employee fighting a grizzly bear off to land a fish – just to go that extra mile for quality. Obviously, it is set up, but with costumes from the Jim Henson Creature Shop it looks surprisingly real, until the bear starts throwing Kung Fu tricks at the “fisherman”.

An unusual viral, it created more than 300 million views and has won ten awards, including Best Commercial of the Year from British Television Advertising Awards and a Gold Lion at the Cannes Lions Festival, 2001. Executed by Leo Burnett, the viral brings together the best of advertising and content in one.

Showing that efforts to increase brand awareness without selling anything can actually work.  Bearing in mind that it’s important to provide an incentive that encourages others to spread the word about your product, quickly and inexpensively with little effort on your part.  This creates potentially exponential growth in the message’s visibility and effect.

Enlisting a niche Online Marketing Strategies firm specializing in Online PR and Online Community Development in your viral marketing campaign will result in effective viral marketing strategies for brands, resulting in significant online audience development.

A recent survey by Terrapinn in November 2009 discovered that the top three challenges to brands when implementing a Digital PR and Reputation Management strategy were:

1. Shortage of time and resources
2. Lack of in-house knowledge of how to engage online
influencers and how to interact on social networks
3. Keeping up to date with the pace of trends and
technology

Having recognised a shortage of in-house skills, businesses are turning to specialist companies for help with their online PR and reputation management strategies, with 56% of respondents saying that they wanted to employ a specialist Online Reputation Management Company.

As well as this, 93% of those businesses surveyed agreed that “online PR and reputation management will become more important over the next 5 years.”

Undeniably.

When considering Europeans spend more time online from mobile devices than they do reading newspapers or magazines with an average of 6.4 hours spent browsing mobile websites, this is THE place you want your business to be.

With 71m Europeans accessing the internet via their mobile each week, 121m people using broadband and 46% of homes owning at least one laptop, their is obvious impetus for European businesses to jump on the bandwagon and invest of digital PR.

In addition, and particularly more interesting, is the fact that Eastern European countries are expected to see increasing internet pentration. Polish people already spend more time browsing the web on their mobiles than any other nationality, 10.3 hours a week on average.  As accurately put by Alison Fennah, executive director of the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA), the study provides a “compelling case for brands to explore” and incorporate a growing number of complemetary interactive platforms into the marketing mix and public relations strategy.  She goes on further to highlight that “mobile is the only medium” you can plan regionally in a properly centralised way.

Your online leg of your PR campaign may be the most important. Most importantly is your message honed and ready?

The most recent player to hone their skills is the BBC.  The latest announcement coming from the corporation is that they are set to shift their positioning on the web with a slashing of online content by half as it tightens its focus.  Less generic content and more links to external sites is the drive.  It will halve the size of bbc.co.uk by closing lower performing sites and reduce its budget and staff by a quarter by 2012.  Digital radio stations 6Music and BBC Asian Network will also close.

Is this something to consider?  Does it pay to have more focused online endeavours? Well, in a word, yes.  This is evident in the BBC’s iPlayer recording of 120m requests for TV and radio shows in January, boosted by Christmas catch-ups and cold weather.  According to the BBC, the online service accounted for 100m requests.  More than 20m views came from its distribution deals with broadcasters such as Virgin Media and gaming companies Nintendo – which now accounts for 4% of requests – and Playstation at 8%.

So the key to online success.  Give your key demographics exactly what they want. Not to mention some nifty public relations work.

You must use digital PR to reach out to consumers, giving yourself that extra edge ahead of competitors.

With this in mind, Volvo has launched an online campaign for its S60 model which asks for users input in developing the final part of the campaign.

Running ahead of the launch of its S60 later this year, the activity aims to show the car’s naughty side in three online films.

The films, which can be viewed at naughty.volvocars.com, show the car doing a slalom test, each time in a ’naughtier’ way, such as driving backwards.

At the end Volvo asks the viewer whether they want the video to be naughtier, before inviting them to a crowdsourcing programme to help with ideas for a fourth film. This will be released to coincide with the car’s on-sale date.

The campaign was created by communications agency Arnold Worldwide and Euro RSCG 4D. Don Lane, Volvo global brand director for Arnold, said, “The Naughty Volvo campaign is designed to be as surprising and innovative as the product itself. This is by far the most integrated, modern campaign we’ve developed together with our partner agencies.”

The many benefits of the ever evolving phone industry has yet another enticing offer in the form of the new online restaurant booking site Toptable, which has launched a free app for the iPhone.  It allows users to find and book restaurants near their location and uses augmented reality to show where the restaurants are.  Other features include a tip calculator to help with leaving a gratuity and a My Sommelier tool, which suggests which wines go with different foods.

This shy’s in comparison to Microsoft’s announcement of its mobile operating system Windows Phone 7, which features integration with its own search engine Bing, connected gaming service Xbox Live and media player Zune.  The computing giant wants to turn around its fortunes in the mobile industry with the launch of a range of phones this year.  This is exciting when you know that HTC has already committed to building devices which use Windows Phone 7.

Interesting to note when according to the American Mobile Association, total spend on mobile marketing will grow from $1.7 billion this year to $2.16 billion in 2010 in the US alone.  Google’s $750 million purchase of mobile ad network Admob reinforces that 2010 will be a significant year for mobile.  From this, many expect to see much more consolidation in the mobile sector.

All of this may well mean that mobile may start to take advertising $$ which would previously have been spent online.  Since it is a new medium however, there remains consumer resistance to mobile advertising, so perhaps it is best for advertisers to favour the soft-sell approach of providing useful information in this space through tactful digitally enabled public relations, rather than pushing hard-selling messages.

For instance, this will work with social media and help to evolve search functions.  Search will become increasingly real-time as users take advantage of Google and Bing search results including Twitter and Facebook updates, or use Twitter Search as a stand alone application to be accessed on your phone.

Indeed. What does the phenomenon of Facebook have to offer?  Amongst other things free samples of the new Marmite savoury cereal bars.  Yum?

Embarking on a campaign using Facebook’s new sampling ad format, Marmite is looking to encourage users of the social networking site to test its new offerings.  Being the second advertiser to use the format, this is actually the first Facebook ad unit that allows users to input their address in order to receive product samples or information from advertisers.  They’ll then be asked to join Marmite’s facebook page and report whether they love or hate the product.

As well as free sample offerings, Facebook goes one leap furtherby signing a payment and ad deal with PayPal.  Those with a PayPal account will now be able to run an ad campaign on Facebook as well as use the online payment system to buy virtual gifts from the Facebook Gift Shop.  The partnership allows payments accepted in key parts of Facebook’s advertising and developer systems.  The availability of ad campaigns to PayPal users will inevitably entice a more rounded offering of smaller, international companies to advertise on the site.  What a partnership huh? Not to mention a fantastic form of online  pr for the soon-to-be companies involved.

Brands are now more than ever at the hands of the consumer in that they are now looking to online communities for innovation as well as for gaining consumer insight.

“Even if a brand doesn’t want to engage with consumers on that level, it will be forced to,” says David Cousino, conusmer marketing insights global category director at Unilever.

If you seriously consider what’s happening online, not just on the social networks, the consumer has a voice as never before and brands need to sit up and listen.  Indeed there are two distinct ways of doing so.  One, you could wait for something to go wrong and then use the community to fix it. Or two, why not leverage the creative ability in the community that’s already out there through forms of digitally enalbled public relations?  More than ever beofre brands need to incorporate consumers in the marketing planning.

However, there is much to be said about handpicking your audience, regarding a velvet rope approach being adopted by an increasing number of brands online.  This has been applied most successfully by the giant that is Unilever.  Forget about simply listening to its customers’ conversations on social networks, they’ve gone that nifty step forward creating bespoke invite-only communities around its brand to tap into customers’ excitement for product development.

This supports what was touched upon on the latest blog referring to the luxury brands adoption of ecommerce.  The answer for these brands is a form of rigorous digital PR, restricting access to their sites to pre-vetted customers.  To understand this, Fabergé will go as far as to phone prospective customers to ascertain their suitability for the site – similar to having to ring the bell to enter a physical store – which enables them to be taken personally through the site.  Not so straightforward, but neverthless they too cannot escape the lure of success through online adoptions.

Can luxury retailers venture into social marketing and PR without losing their prestige and sophistication?

“Luxury brands are the IDEAL brands to be using social media and that social networking, microblogging and online content creation represent big opportunities for these brands to really stand out, improve their customer loyalty, drive sales and, in fact, maintain the image they have worked hard to create for their brands”, says Ogilvy Digital 360’s Rohit Bhargava.

Positive benefits can be achieved through several online PR approaches.

1. Monitor and listen to understand customer needs.

Listening to what customers are saying online, whether they’ve purchased your product or not, is imperative.  Not only shows brand where their current customers are, it exposes new markets.  Community monitoring provides real-time consumer sentiment and perceptions of a brand’s products.

2. Start off by using sharing tools.

Sharing tools enable customers to share corporate-created content such as videos, blog posts, images, and contests.  Good start because it simply extends the corporate approved and created content to the social realm, explains Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester Research Analyst.

By adding social sharing buttons, a brand or retailer with an e-commerce site needs to make the sharing barrier as low as possible to encourage customers, potential customers and citizen fashion journalists (aka bloggers) to share products across their social communities or taken further and make sure you add fashion-site-specific sharing icons if the fashion communities that a brand’s engaged with or sponsoring. Also the perfect time to explore if a brand should develop its own widgets.  Interactive widgets boost website traffic and increase the ROI on social media initiatives.

3. Highlight consumer-created content from “preferred” customer segments.

If celebrities are using your products and talk about them, echo it back and highlight them.  Owyang suggests highlighting users of your products in your blog, from Twitter, or other social technology and allow users to share and spread this kind of news to their own websites using simple tools like ShareThis.

Though celebrity product lines have started to lose their luster, celebrity endorsements still hold weight with many consumers and their aspirations. User-generated content from fashion loving consumers, independent fashion bloggers and digital fashion celebrities are powerful word-of-mouth marketing and sales tools. User-generated content is a gold mine, and there are thousands of people sharing and spreading retailers products across the web. Estee Lauder examplified this by their in-store product demos linking up to profile pictures on social networking sites.  This is a perfect example of a brand using their online marketing and PR to drive awareness to in-store events. The best part is that the in-store event tied back to the online social media efforts.

4. Develop or sponsor lifestyle communities.

Branded communities, social networks, or bloggers can all be reached using traditional media relations tactics.  Not unlike traditional sponsorship and spokesperson product trial programs, you can develop brand affinity in the social space through formal programs.  The trick, however, is understanding how your products can become a platform to uplift their voice –not just to insert your own.

Luxury brands can actually take social media a step further.  Many luxury brands are developing their own social networks or even invitation-only communities.  Sponsoring communities can be a chance to develop brand affinity and establish authentic consumer-brand relationships.  Not all of a luxury brand’s social media strategies should be about mass awareness. Quality over quantity still has its place.  Sites such as MyItThings, LadyLux, LuxuryCulture or Just Luxe can have a better ROI as their audiences are more likely to become paid customers. And while some may not agree with me — when it comes to luxury brands, social media ROI does extend to sales.

Nevertheless, one should also draw upon that “not all of a brands social media strategies should be about mass awareness.”  When we think about the viral nature of the social web it seems a common misconception that its all about going viral..how many people we can reach…how fast something will spread…how many clicks?  Luxury brands need luxury social media.  They have to be especially strategic and find segmented ways of addressing their top customers as well as their aspirational fans. 

The advent of the digital generation has fundamentally transformed the nature of public relations and corporate business.

Industry leaders have revealed that the world’s top companies are increasingly turning to social media to convey their messages to both the public and their stakeholders, with 79 % of Fortune Global 100 companies admitting to using at least one social media platform as part of their communications strategy, according to a study by Burson-Marsteller.

On average, companies claimed to have 4.2 Twitter accounts, 2.1 Facebook fan pages, 1.6 Youtube channels, and 4.2 corporate blogs.  More specifically, Asia-Pacific companies are more likely to have blogs than engage on other social media platforms.  50% of companies surveyed have a blog, while 40% use Twitter and 40% use Facebook.

Burson-Marsteller Asia-Pacific’s lead digital strategist, Charlie Pownall, noted that regional companies have been slower to integrate social media into their strategies, but are changing. “International firms are leading by example in their use of social media; Asian companies have proved more conservative, remaining concerned about resourcing, costs, measurement and the potential reputational risks,” he said. “As their domestic audiences continue to move online, and as the technology infrastructure improves across the region, Asian companies will come to use social media as the core business tool that it has become in the US and Europe.”
Globally, 82 per cent of the polled companies had tweeted in the last week, and 59 per cent had posted content on their Facebook fan page.  In the prior month, 68 per cent had uploaded a video on YouTube and 36 per cent had posted an entry on a corporate blog, reveals Media Asia.

Media Asia further adhere that companies have used social media to interact with audiences as well as using the platforms to relay their own messages.  Thirty-eight per cent of companies affirmed that they respond to audience tweets, and 32 have reposted user comments.
This is interesting to note when news comes that Twitter has passed the landmark figure of 50 million tweets per day and passes Myspace, whilst also considering to allow businesses to personalise accounts used by multiple memebers of staff by adding their own ‘byline’ to tweets in what is the first of a series of additions for business users.