360i

Spring has sprung and along with it a ton of exiting Social TV News. April was a wild month that included record-breaking premieres, flashy media upfronts, election developments and historic, digital signs of the times. Below are some of our favorite highlights from the past 30 days.

1. Game of Thrones breaks GetGlue. HBO kicked off the month by flexing their social muscles for the premiere of Game of Thrones Season 2. There was so much activity that the show drove multiple worldwide trending topics on Twitter and for crashing GetGlue’s servers (momentarily) on premiere night.
2. Psych-ed to hit 100K. While networks typically focus their marketing efforts on premieres, USA Network’s hit show Psych had thousands of reasons to cheer for the finale of Season 6 as they passed 100K Twitter followers. To share their appreciation, USA Network (a 360i client) and the cast of Psych produced personal and sincere thank you messages that were shared via @Psych_USA.
3. NBC & the first digital Olympic Games. 360i client NBC Sports excited millions of fans when they confirmed that London 2012 will indeed be the first-ever digital Olympic Games by announcing that the network will be live-streaming all 32 events from London and connecting fans to the action via social media.
4. Social takes center stage at BET Upfront. BET’s social presences have consistently stood out among their entertainment peers. Take for example @106andpark which, with 4MM followers, is a social TV powerhouse on Twitter. To further draw attention to their success, BET put social front and center at their upfront and took time to discuss their goal to provide the best digital environment possible to their viewers. Read the full article »

For many teens, the pinnacle of ‘Happiness’ would be hanging out with their favorite pop star – of course few people are ever afforded such an opportunity. Well, this dream is about to become a reality for seven lucky teens thanks to 360i client Coca-Cola and Google+.

As part of Coca-Cola and American Idol’s ‘Perfect Harmony’ program – in which fans can help singer Jason Derulo pen his next big hit – the brand has picked a handful of teens to participate in a live chat on the Coca-Cola Google+ page. You can watch the chat LIVE tonight at 7 p.m. EST, as Jason answers fan questions and takes live ones from the Coca-Cola community.

Image via College Candy

Coca-Cola hosted its first Google+ hangout in February. The broadcast featured archivists from the brand who fielded questions from the Coca-Cola archives. The brand, which touts one of the largest corporate presences on Facebook, has more than half a million fans on Google+.

Earlier this month, Google rolled out its ‘Hangouts on Air’ feature to all Google+ users. This update allows any G+ member to publicly broadcast a hangout for their network to see – either within the Google+ stream, from a website or from a YouTube channel.

Last week, Bing announced the most significant update to its platform since its launch three years ago, by introducing a new social structure to its search results.

Microsoft has had the jump on Google for quite some time now when it comes to privileged social data, winning both the Twitter fire-hose deal and enjoying a cozy relationship with Facebook. And with Tweet and Like counts clearly poised to be the new relevancy king-maker signals, the most surprising thing about yesterday’s announcement is that it took so long.

In fact, a week prior to the announcement, it appeared Microsoft took a step backwards, reverting to an old familiar top-ten look for results. This turned out to be clean-up in preparation for pop-out panels, which allow for enhanced results and apps, and a right-rail for social. In this new scheme, the pop-out panels can provide shopping or reservation apps right on location to satisfy the user onsite.

Top Changes

Significant changes to the platform include the addition of “snapshot” and “social” bars to SERPs. Natural search links will remain on the left side of the page, similar to what was rolled out in last week’s UI Update. This section will still include the “gutter” at the far left of the screen.

The snapshot bar will be immediately to the right of natural links and will leverage APIs to populate data related to your search. The social bar on the far right will house social networks that the searcher opts-in to connect to (i.e. – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Foursquare, and LinkedIn). This bar will take information from these services and display content relevant to the search query. The bar is divided into three sections: People Who Might Know (it will take info from your friends and say how it matches your query), People Who Know (will leverage experts specializing in the query area that may or may not be a direct social connection to the searcher), and Activity (shows curated posts from your social network).

Bing’s new Search Page Layout

While advertisers have been flocking to Facebook – especially in light of media opportunities introduced at fMC earlier this year – measuring the impact of their efforts relative to other channels has left some media folks scratching their heads. A Wall Street Journal article published yesterday explores the sense of “doubt” some marketers feel toward their media investment within the world’s largest social network.

Graphic via the Wall Street Journal

Although Facebook has built out a full suite of media opportunities to bolster its $3 billion-a-year ad business, Suzanne Vranica and Shayndi Raice of the WSJ argue that “some marketers … are wondering whether they’re getting their money’s worth.” It’s a fair question – especially given Facebook’s impending IPO purported to happen later this month. By the way, Facebook’s valuation is projected to be nearly $100 billion – or 33x the company’s ad revenue, according to Vranica and Raice.

Yet more than doubt, advertisers are experiencing a sense of confusion regarding how media impact within Facebook can and should be measured. The discussion and debate surrounding social media ROI is nothing new – it’s a topic we’ve been hearing about for years – but it does take on a different weight as brands continue to up their investment in Facebook.

For example, one marketer featured in the WSJ piece cites that while he is increasing his investment, he’s still unsure of if an ad on the platform will lead to an eventual sale. Some brands, like Ford, have conducted research to tie social investment to sales and found that Facebook media can in fact provide a boost to sales. There is widespread agreement that social media is effective in helping reach such goals; however, marketers continue to wonder to what degree social media is driving the sale.

But is this the right way to evaluate success on Facebook? As 360i President Sarah Hofstetter notes in the article, Facebook might not be the right platform for marketers who measure ROI as direct sales from the Web. “If the goal is to move the needle on brand health metrics, whether its awareness or engagement, then Facebook should be a key part of the marketing mix for most consumer brands,” she says.

Read the full article »

We’re excited to announce today that 360i has hired Adam Kerj as Chief Creative Officer, effective immediately. Adam joins as us a member of the agency’s executive team and will oversee 360i’s creative department. A pioneer in identifying and implementing big ideas that solve business challenges, Adam’s expertise and passion will expand our current capabilities to help brands connect with people in the digital age.

Prior to 360i, Adam served as Executive Creative Director and Founding Partner at Saatchi & Saatchi in Stockholm, Sweden. He’s a highly-decorated creative who has garnered more than 50 international industry awards in his career, including several from the Cannes Lions, CLIOs, New York Festival Awards, FAB and Eurobest.

Across your entire portfolio, what work are you most proud of, and why?

AK: I’m most proud of my work for Ariel, a detergent brand within P&G Nordic. The campaign, called “The Ariel Fashion Shoot,” was a classic product demo remixed for the 2012 audience. The shoot was the world’s biggest product demo in detergent history – and it was completely transparent. This meant that people could – for the first time ever – see that Ariel’s new stain-fighting formula actually worked as well as the brand said it did, because we washed the clothes in front of a live audience of viewers.

But what makes the campaign truly innovative is that we invited consumers to take part in the demo themselves by allowing them to take aim at premium designer clothes and stain them. To pull this off, we custom-built an industrial robot and armed it with lingonberry jam (a Scandinavian staple), chocolate sauce and ketchup. Then, we connected it to Facebook.

The results exceeded our expectations, as post-campaign awareness for Ariel reached an all-time high. To me, this campaign was a fantastic example of how we used a relevant idea to fuel conversations online. With very little paid media, we were able to own conversations online regarding detergent – proving that if you’re relevant to the consumer and facilitate a worthwhile value exchange, brands can create exciting conversations around any topic – even something as commonplace as detergent.

Of course, I also credit P&G for being so committed to change the way their brand was communicating to its consumers and for understanding the difference between being simply ‘digital’ and being ‘social and participatory.’ It’s no surprise to me that the campaign was recently voted one of the Best Digital Ideas of 2011 by Adweek, and continues to garner accolades in several global awards programs.

Continue reading our Q&A with Adam Kerj

Today, we released a new POV on Paid and Earned Media: Building an Integrated Strategy.

As content across the social media landscape proliferates, it is becoming increasingly important for brands to cut through the clutter. Although brands are eager to connect with and engage consumers, industry findings estimate that fewer than 10% of a brand’s Facebook fans see content that is posted by the brand, indicating that brands can no longer rely on smart content alone to drive engagement and organic fan acquisition.  As a result, it’s important for brands to look to paid media as an integral part of overall community strategy.

This report outlines how brands can begin to think about a strategy that integrates paid and earned in order to maximize the opportunity across social channels.

View and download the full report »

When Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion this week, the immediate reaction – beyond a collective gasp at the price tag – was to question why the largest social network would invest so heavily in a simple, yet beloved, mobile photo sharing application. But as our David Berkowitz writes in MediaPost today, there should be no question why Facebook made this deal.

“Beyond any numbers and superlatives, what Facebook’s executives must have realized is that Instagram should never have existed. This should have been Facebook’s photo application all along. Facebook has more than 400 million mobile users, and any of them using a smartphone has to grapple with subpar photo sharing. Once Instagram fully integrated with Facebook, it became even more obvious that Facebook was far behind. As Business Insider put it, ‘Without photos, Facebook is toast.’”

The column continues to explain that Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram was really an acquisition of itself – or, rather, an acquisition of a functionality that Facebook could have very easily built into its service, but didn’t. “This acquisition once again reminds marketers how visual consumers are. Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram aren’t flukes; people enjoy expressing themselves via images,” writes Berkowitz.

You can read the full post over on MediaPost’s Social Media Insider blog. For more insight, check out some of our favorite quotes on the acquisition below.