360DigitalInfluence

There are more than 30,000 non-executive members of company boards across Australia. If you are one of them, what are the questions you should be asking about how the business you manage is handling social media?

We’ve put together five “starter” questions that corporate board members should ask to gauge how well the companies they oversee are managing the risks and taking advantage of the opportunities presented by social media.

What other questions should board members be asking?

An item that clients often ask for when rolling out a campaign, is the obligatory checkbox, that says Twitter. Unfortunately, Twitter is not the gift that keeps on giving, unlike services such as Slideshare.

Allow me to clarify. Client asks you to roll out a campaign, there’s an event, the event hashtag goes crazy, you’re trending on Twitter, client loves you. Three days later, you do a search and find NOTHING. Zilch. Nada. That’s because Twitter search does not persist. So when people go looking for information after the event, you get no link backs to your campaign site, and there’s no ‘word on the twittersphere about your campaign’. Not ideal right?

Now just to clarify what I meant about Slideshare. If you upload any presentations from the event to Slideshare, it will live there and your content will be searched for and found ad infinitum.

OK, so the headline is a little bit controversial and a bit of bait. But here’s the dealio. What you want to do, is aggregate the hash tag stream on an open, search engine friendly platform. That might be a WordPress site as an aggregator, Tumblr or some other bespoke system, this has to be done if you want the conversations to be found down the track.

Thanks to Jeremiah Owyang for the prompt to commit this post to paper. He talks about using a live blogging application which is great idea. This works well if you have an official blogger at the event. What a campaign aggregator will do though is capture everything on the hashtag (and any other social media) not just what your official blogger is doing.

Dora Yin (DI, BJ) loves the new McDonald’s tray paper, which can be folded into a “Douban Radio”. This activity drives users of Douban into McDonald’s and is making more McDonald’s diners aware of Douban Radio — the streaming music service offered by the Chinese SNS.

Dora Yin（北京，DI）喜欢前段时间麦当劳的餐盘纸可以折成豆瓣电台的活动，它吸引了豆瓣的粉丝跑去吃麦当劳拿餐盘纸，吃麦当劳的人对豆瓣电台也有了认知。

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Jeremy is sure that “egotistical” displays of products and brands will not be shared online and will never go viral. Forget about your brand for a minute and think about what the target audience finds useful, funny, etc. The next step is then to see if any of this can be matched to the brand message. This is precisely what Lynx seems to have done with their “Wingman Academy” webisodes.

Jeremy确信“自私”的产品或品牌展示将无法在网上被分享，更不会被病毒式传播。暂时抛开你的品牌想想，target audience认为有用有趣之类的东西是什么，然后看看有没有可以匹配你品牌要传达的信息的东西。Lynx通过“Wingman Academy”网络剧集实践了这个过程。

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This Ray-Ban design competition has generated awareness for the brand on Douban. Dora thinks that a brand which attracts trendy youth and a competition which attracts young artists is a great match.

雷朋眼镜的线上印花设计大赛最近又把自己炒的火热，Dora觉得这种吸引时髦青年的品牌跟吸引文艺青年的比赛实在是绝佳搭配。

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Liza Levy (DI, SH) likes this social media campaign, which was created by a UK charity to raise money for a Royal Airforce cause. Five fictional characters are being brought to life through daily blogs and tweets, painting a picture of what life was like during the Battle of Britain.

一家英国慈善机构为皇家空军发起了一项有趣的社会媒体活动，以帮助人们提高对战争的认识并筹集资金。 5个虚构的人物每天通过博客日志和图片来描述不列颠之战中的生活是什么样，这让Liza Levy (上海，DI) 觉得十分新颖。

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Dianna Wang (H-Line, BJ) wants to share with you Intel China’s Weibo feed, Intel China Daily Express. This channel updates followers with Intel-related news and is a platform for hearing feedback from media and netizens.

Dianna Wang (北京，H-Line)认为英特尔中国官方微博“英特尔中国天天事”获得了巨大的成功，英特尔中国天天事致力于打造英特尔媒体社交平台，英特尔信息即时分享平台及与媒体、网友的互动平台。

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If you didn’t make it to the Foursquare for Business webinar yesterday, Jeremy suggests looking at the training deck online. Foursquare is blocked in China, but the strategic framework outlined in the presentation applies equally to equivalent Chinese services.

 如果你昨天没能参加关于Foursquare的商务在线会议，Jeremy建议去在线培训PPT看一下。虽然Foursquare在中国是被墙的，但关于战略结构的概述也适用于中国的类似服务。

Location Based Services…..continue to grow. Most people have now begun to accept this. The growth of foursquare is tremendous – over 15k new users per day and over 2 million thus far.

For more information on how to use foursquare for your business, see the following link to Ogilvy’s view

http://www.slideshare.net/360digitalinfluence/ogilvy-on-how-to-use-foursquare-for-business

Further support to the growth of LBS, Facebook just launched their LBS as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/08/19/business/AP-US-TEC-Facebook.html?_r=1&hp

More and more, customers are becoming engaged and connected.

Here are the slides from the latest presentation by our team at Ogilvy, presented as part of the series done with The Wall Street Journal and GoToWebinar on Social Media for Business.

Thomas Crampton, Brian Giesen and I are getting ready to kick off our Wall Street Journal Asia: Foursquare for Business webinar.

Sign up here for free last minute registration.

If you can’t make it this morning at 11am Hong Kong time, I’ve posted below the strategic framework we’re about to present.

Stay tuned; we’ll be posting the full presentation on Asia Digital Map later today!

(ht: to @timho for design)

Campaign Asia just reported on the expansion of our regional Social Media team, with Lucille Snape and Annie Hammel joining as Digital Strategists and Koby Geddes as a Digital Analyst, all in Sydney. Welcome to the team!

Full details below. Our expansion is proceeding at breakneck speed, so do get in touch with me if you are looking for a social media job. Some relevant characteristics of successful candidates: Passion for Social Media, bordering on obsessive; super intelligent; super hard worker; super fun; good taste in music.

Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence Recruits Three Key Hires

Sydney, 13 August, 2010: Ogilvy 360 Degree Digital Influence has further expanded its social media capability with the recruitment of three new specialists into its practice.

In response to increasing client demand, Lucille Snape and Annie Hammel join the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence team as Digital Strategists and Koby Geddes as a Digital Analyst. Lucille previously worked at Euro RSCG, Koby at OMD Australia and Annie at Hachette Filipacchi Media in the US.

The appointments come just 12 months after award-winning strategist Brian Giesen moved from Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence in Washington DC to head up the Australian operation, and help manage the Asia Pacific practice.

“Since the appointment of Brian our team has quickly grown to six specialists who are full-time social media practitioners,” said Graham White, Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence’s Managing Director in Australia. “This reflects the growth, adoption and opportunity for social media in our clients’ communications programs.

“There is no doubt that Australian organisations, both public and private sector, are rushing to embrace social media,” he added.

Brian Giesen, Regional Director, Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence, said: “Social media is not just a new channel. It represents a fundamental consumer behavioural shift that requires marketers to change how they market, how they are organised and importantly how they measure success.

“Consumers get social media. But companies, by contrast, have been playing catch up,” Giesen said. “The good news is they’re learning fast that it’s not optional and that a comprehensive strategic approach to integrate social media is essential.

“For Ogilvy, it’s of critical importance to have an expert team to guide them through it. The addition of Lucille, Annie and Koby to our existing team will further strengthen Ogilvy’s social media capabilities and our ability to deliver successful, strategic campaigns for our clients,” he said.

“We anticipate further hires in the near future,” he added.

Ogilvy PR is part of STW Group, Australia’s leading marketing content and communications services group. Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence is Ogilvy’s word of mouth marketing discipline that integrates the power of social media with digital marketing.

Last week I sat down with David Liu, CEO and founder of Jiepang, to talk about his company and check-in/location-based services in China.

Jiepang, which David describes as the “Foursquare of China”, is probably the leading service of its kind in the country. This is thanks to its relatively good Android and iPhone apps, huge database of locations (they added many themselves), and links to the major Chinese social networks.

I caught up with Yiying Lu Lu an artist and designer probably best known for creating the iconic fail whale that greets Twitter users when the service is down. We talked about the history of the image (hint: it wasn’t originally a whale) and how the guys at Twitter came across the image.

Here’s a clip from our interview…

In her hit single ‘Single Ladies’, Beyonce says, “if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it”. If only it was that simple. For decades, brands have been trying to ‘put a ring on’ teens. However, few have succeeded in gaining teens’ commitment; they are arguably the most non-committal group of consumers out there. This digitally sophisticated generation is increasingly savvy, wary and fickle. However, with huge spending power, teenagers are the consumers of today and of the future. This has resulted in many brands ‘fishing where the fish are’, upping their online presence with YouTube videos, Facebook profiles and multiple digital campaigns. Still, few have been successful in capturing the hearts (and wallets) of this highly sought after group.

According to the Oxford dictionary, ‘Influence’ is defined as ‘The power or ability to affect someone’s beliefs or actions.’ In order to successfully influence someone, it is essential to gain their respect and trust by actively demonstrating you are interested in them and understand them. In the case of most brands, this merely equates to jumping on the latest digital bandwagon. For example, getting onto Twitter just because ‘every other teen is ‘Tweeting’ these days’. Hanging out in teenage hotspots is one thing, but if a brand doesn’t understand teens’ needs and motivations for being there in the first place, success will merely boil down to luck. It’s no wonder so few brands have succeeded with this challenging group of consumers.

In 2009, Ogilvy Malaysia set out to better understand and effectively influence this elusive group, by conducting research specifically to uncover the role of technology in the life of 15-18 year old Malaysian teens.

3 key discoveries were made:

Firstly, the basic needs of teens have largely remained the same throughout the years.

The 5 basic needs of teenagers have been identified as the need for Self-Expression, 24/7 Communication with Peers, Privacy , Self-Achievement and a Sense of Belonging. All these needs are manifestations of a deeper need for Identity Discovery and Development.

A child’s identity is shaped solely by his or her parents. Upon reaching early teenage years, the need to discover and define one’s self emerges . In helping teens discover who they really are, the opinion of peers take precedence over those of their parents. It becomes exceedingly important for teens to belong and be accepted by their peer groups, to ensure they are not perceived as inadequate. This explains certain cult-like tendencies, such as worshipping the same movie stars, wearing the same clothes and rebelling against traditional authority.

The second discovery is that these digital natives cannot imagine life without technology.

Having grown up in a digital world, this generation lives and breathes technology. Perpetually online and connected 24/7, a 16 year old said “The Internet is like oxygen, when my computer doesn’t work I feel like my world has ended.” (Source: Ogilvy Malaysia 2009 research: ‘The Transitory World of Gen C Teens’). Almost half of Malaysian teens interviewed feel more comfortable expressing themselves on MSN instead of in person , and more than half feel naked without their mobile phone (Source: Ogilvy Malaysia 2009 research: ‘The Transitory World of Gen C Teens’) Technology has become a key part of their lifestyle, integrated in just about everything they do.

Finally, most importantly, a new ‘Transitory World’ has emerged as a result of technology.
For the generations of teenagers who had to discover and develop their identity without the benefits of technology, the process of identity discovery and development was a difficult one, often resulting in high social anxiety for fear of ridicule and rejection.

Thanks to technology, a whole new world has emerged for the teens of today, making this process significantly less painful and intimidating. Located in between their private and public worlds, the ‘Transitory World’ is an experimental buffer zone where teens are able to freely explore, express and experiment with the formulation of their identity before taking the giant leap of showcasing this identity in the public world.

Ubiquitous technological platforms such as mobile phones, social networking sites (SNS), instant messengers (IM) and blogs reside in the ‘Transitory World’. The fast, fluid nature of these tech-platforms assist teens in exploring and defining their identity with immediate affirmation.

SNS and blogs provide teens the canvas to easily create material that can be interacted with, commented on and changed quickly. Teens are able to update their online profile and blogs and receive almost instantaneous comments and feedback from friends. Different groupings on IM and private SNS groups help to further reinforce and establish existing peer groups. Mobile phones allow them to constantly keep their friends in the loop, strengthening their sense of belonging. The ‘Transitory World’ helps mitigate the anxiety, embarrassment, and humiliation teens often experienced during the crucial transition from their private world to the public world.

The ‘Transitory World’ is a fertile, safe-haven, where teens are receptive and open-minded. As it is still relatively untapped and uninhabited by brands, there is a huge opportunity for first-movers to greatly influence and impact teenagers. To do this, brands firstly need to realize the existence of such a world. They also need to understand how to best use technology to assist teens in meeting their basic needs, using the right technology platforms to meet their different needs.

By navigating and optimizing the ‘Transitory World’, brands will be finally be able to engage, influence and ‘put a ring’ on this highly prized group of consumers.