I whispered it under my breath as I boarded the plane from Washington D.C. to Hong Kong.  I wrote it on post-it notes.  I even considered getting it tattooed on my arm: Don’t Say the F-Word.  Don’t say Facebook. Not here.  Not in Asia.

As a recent Ogilvy transplant from Washington D.C. and the newest member of the APAC Digital Influence team based in Hong Kong, I knew I’d have a long list of client introductions and a few speaking engagements within my first 30 days.  As I prepared for the move, I was hyper-sensitive to the idea that I’d be a newcomer to the region and spent considerable time studying the major social sites for the APAC region.  All of this in an effort to avoid dropping the F-word when I should have said “Orkut” or “Mixi” or any one of the other social networks.  You might say I had an America Social Media Accent and I tried to loose it before I landed in Hong Kong.

Well, for those like me still learning the statistics that shape the social web in Asia, I have news for you.  Drop the F-bomb.  Drop it often.  Facebook, now more than ever, reigns supreme in most Asia Pacific regions with a dominate social network.  According to comSore, Facebook is the dominate social network for 9 out of the 12 APAC regions.   And, for markets in which the dominate social network really dominates (e.g. over 60% web penetration) the figure jumps to 7 out of 8.

Does that mean all my studying was for nothing?  Certainly not.  Every market is unique and worthy of special exploration.  While a few of the regions may share a similar social site (e.g. Facebook) that doesn’t mean there are not drastic differences in the way people consume media and share content online.  The mosaic of cultures and web behaviors that make up this region are more than any one blog post could possibly address.  Though, after 30 days of working in the APAC Digital Influence group, I can report that Facebook is alive and well in most corners of the world.  And yes, I hear the Facebook Bomb dropped on most days, just like in the US.

This report did not include China in which Facebook and most other networks are banned.  You can read up on the social networks that call China home (and all things related to mainland China) by following our Asia Digital Map China tag here. Hat tip to Ogilvy’s Daniel Brenikov for his recent post exploring Facebook’s growth across Southeast Asia.

A recent report by Inside Facebook highlights the interesting development of Facebook in Southeast Asia. Despite being blocked in China, East Asia’s largest and fastest-growing market, Facebook has grown phenomenally in the rest of Southeast Asia during the last few quarters.

How has this happened?

• In Taiwan, Facebook has exploded from 400,000 to nearly 7 million users in only 12 months
• Significant growth in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia
• Indonesia is now the world’s #3 country in terms of total Facebook audience size (behind US and UK)
• Facebook has overtaken hi5 in Thailand and Friendster in the Philippines (formerly the top social networks)
• …But Facebook has seen little growth in Japan and S. Korea

Taiwan’s rapid adoption of Facebook is a particulary interesting example, as it is now one of the few non-English speaking countries with over 30% penetration, joining Hong Kong and Singapore as one of Facebook’s Asian sucess stories.

Why Taiwan?

• A key driver for this growth has been social gaming apps, like Happy Harvest, Pet Society and Restaurant City
• These apps pull users away from other social sites without games, like Taiwan’s other social network Wretch.cc
• More games are being developed in or translated into Traditional Chinese, such as Mahjong by Godgames

Though perhaps Taiwan doesn’t represent a gateway to the rest of Southeast Asia,  it does show that Facebook can be successful in the region. Perhaps social gaming will also open doors for Facebook in tougher markets like Japan and South Korea…

There are some companies that are still unable to understand the true value of social media for their business. Now there is a better way to convince them, in a language they understand: ROI.

A recent study (pdf), conducted and published by Syncapse, examines social media in terms of ROI.  It does this by quantifying and understanding the impact of social media marketing investment on the top 20 brands on Facebook. The findings were pretty interesting.

This is particularity important, because quantifying the ROI of Facebook marketing efforts might change how we present social media as a marketing strategy to our clients.

The study examined the five leading contributors to Facebook fan value.

(1) Product Spending (2) Brand Loyalty (3) Propensity to Recommend (4) Brand Affinity (5) Earned Media Value.

Significant Findings:

ROI:

· Fans spend an additional average of $71.84 on products for which they are fans compared to those who are not fans.

· The average value of a Facebook fan was $136.38. On a McDonald’s fan base of 2,232,328, the worth of annualized value would equate to $580,003,461.

· No two brand’s fan values are the same: Fan value of BlackBerry ($83.98) versus Nokia ($180.87).

Repurchase

· Fans are 28% more likely than non-fans to continue using the brand

· 42.5% of fans indicating a heightened likelihood of continued product usage

Loyalty

· 81% of fans said they feel connection/empathy with the brand, compared to 39% of non-fans

· 87% said they felt warmth, gratitude, happy or satisfied, compared to 49% of non-fans

Word of Mouth:

· Fans are 41% more likely than non-fans to recommend a fanned product to their friends

· 44% Likelihood to try a product if close family member or friend became a fan

· 68% of Facebook fans indicated that they are very likely to recommend a product (One of the highest was Victoria’s Secret with 79.4%)

Shaping Fan Value:

· Factors influencing and impacting fan value include: Product price, purchase lifecycle, sales penetration, brand health, product health, Facebook marketing success, loyalty, spending, fan acquisition cost, affinity and media value.

Key Takeaways for Digital Marketers and Their Clients:

· Frame It In $$: More and more, we should present social media marketing to clients in terms of ROI, ##’s and $$. This allows us to demonstrate the power of this marketing platform in a business language most can understand.  It also portrays social media in a context that makes good financial sense. “Social media can make you money”

· Digital Deep Dive: This study, along with specific case studies should act as a digital gateway, by helping us in convincing clients to dive deep into social media strategies and allocate a bigger budget for social marketing.

· Act Now, Look Later: Social media marketing is a long-term process which aims at building networks of loyal and brand hungry consumers.  It might be comprised of various short-term campaigns, but brands must have a long-term view of social ROI

· Online Efforts Boost Offline Sales: The 20 brands examined in this study rely on offline sales to succeed. They use social media to drive offline traffic into their stores.

· Social Actually Works: The more you reach, connect, and effectively engage audiences on social media, the more you increase:

1. Long-term ROI

2. Brand perception and awareness

3. Brand loyalty, connection & repeated purchases

4. Organic marketing (facilitated online word of mouth)

· Ask Why?:  Finally, we should be able to easily explain to clients that “There is a reason why these big brands are pouring millions in social media, and moving away from traditional media:”

1. Cheaper and more effective than most mass media marketing

2. More targeted and audience specific

3. Generates added brand empathy and connection with consumers

4. Provides consumers access to the brand, anytime, anywhere and at their fingertips

5. Allows consumers to market & recommend brand products themselves

6. Timely and compelling, moves consumers to take action

7. Allows consumers to engage with brands in a FUN WAY (and not interruptive)

Connect with Haysam on Twitter: @hisom

I’ve come across a few interesting ideas this week. The first:

1. Mountains and Mona Lisa - Samsung >> this has limited application as an emerging media I admit, but I offer it firstly because I was bought up on Wales, but more importantly because it was the precursor to the second idea – which is much more applicable:

2. Monuments and masses – Samsung 3D projections>> 3D projection will grow and grow as a brand experience format. These two ideas  in tandem create quite an interesting space that Samsung is beginning to own – innovation with LED and lighting -  similar to the Crowdsourcing ideas in Liverpool Street and Trafalgar Square that T Mobile had so much success in. There are lots of examples of monumental 3D projections – one most recently by BMW in Singapore. I adore this sort of creative work, because it is the true fusion of physical and digital. It creates both a physical and digital Theatre for the Brand in which consumers co-exist and co-create. Developing these “sustained conversations and dialogues” is core to building brands and emotions between them and consumers.

I also really enjoyed Google Chrome’s browser speed test. In a world full of complications I think it is a good example of how to make an intangible USP, more tangible. Until your competitor, the Opera Browser,  responds with their own  repost the Opera’s Speed test. Both ideas are sort of traditional “advertising stories” but neither will ever pay for media on TV.

A week would not be a week without some passing mention of an iPad, so here are two explorations of the iPad on the left side of leftfiled – the first is the iPad magic show from Japan; the second a low tech adaptation to make the hi tech, better: Velcro + iPad

Also several bookmarks on data visualisations and info-graphics this week – helping creative and data minds meet, or not:
David Armano’s excellent visualisations of our communication and social world: and a few others from Hubspot’s 22 social media Diagrams: and finally a good collection from Nowsourcing .

It’s happening right now – 5.00pm MYT. A flash mob — Tali Tenang – that garnered interest and attendance via Facebook group United Colours of Malaysia and promoted via Twitter (@RandomAlphabets), to advocate peace amongst Malaysians in light of the our recent religious unrest.

While many of us can’t be there in person, we can get live updates from @RandomAlphabets and #talitenang. Let’s wait and see if #talitenang will become another trending topic.

Bad news sell… or a laughing matter does.

On Tuesday, Malaysia’s Information, Communication and Culture Minister gained celebrity status on Twitter, and here’s why.

While the world is focused on the misfortune and issues in Haiti, Malaysia had its own share of the limelight at the start of 2010. We made news with our recent torching and vandalising of churches following a court ruling that allowed Catholic publication, The Herald, to use the word “Allah” to refer to the Christian God.

In the spate of events, a student was charged for posting a church attack hoax on Facebook — he was charged with threatening public safety in relation to a comment he posted about the recent attacks on churches.

Amidst all this clamour, Malaysia’s Information, Communication and Culture Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim, had stepped forward to advise Malaysians, especially Muslims, against being totally immersed in the Internet culture, especially Facebook and Twitter.

In recent news reports, he said that facilities such as the Internet could not be accepted wholly because it was a form of business introduced by the West and “Malaysians were just users”. Datuk Seri Dr Rais was quoted as saying that when using such facilities, the people must upkeep the values taught by Islam, Buddhism or Christianity to maintain our culture.

Following this. the local blogosphere and twittersphere were astir with comments about what he said. Twitter-ers have started making jokes about him being too old and regressive-minded, and have made #yorais a trending topic on Tuesday (moving up from no.8 to no.4 within the hour I was writing this). Thanks to the hashtag creator, too.

I was trying hard not to ROTF in stitches reading tweets about “Rais Yatim is so ancient, he…”

Now, I wonder how he (and the government) is going to influence the people to resist (being totally immersed) the powerful allure of Facebook and Twitter (and ultimately the Internet). This is especially when Pikom — the National Information and Communications Technology Association of Malaysia, expects the Internet penetration in Malaysia to grow between 10% and 20% this year, and broadband penetration to reach 50% from the current 32%.

Most of the social media projects I deal with at Ogilvy are for global brands, it’s interesting to learn from local successful cases like this one. It’s a cafe in Mong Kok with a wide range of comic book collections called Ease House Cafe, where they target mainly to young comic lovers.
As a small cafe located on the 25th floor of a building, 21 year-old owner realized it would be hard to spread the message out if he used traditional marketing tactics, so he went digital.

They use Facebook as a channel to grow fan base and increase loyalty by keeping their fans updated on news and special deals, also partnered with a local cafe directory site up4cafe to offer readers coupons.
Recently, they are having this “Blog for free dinner” campaign, where they encourage bloggers to write about their Cafe, they will search on Google every month with keyword “Ease House Cafe” and pick a blog that’s index high enough on the search, sounds like a small scale blogger engagement, a very smart idea to get themselves quality organic search results, but personally I would also go for keywords like “comic books”, “hong kong” too. (in Eng & Chinese).

With limited resources, many local small & medium business owners in Hong Kong are afraid to invest time and money on this new media, but with all the recent success here in Hong Kong, I think business owners should really reconsider and make a move soon!

The New Oxford American Dictionary has announced it’s 2009 Word of the Year:

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

Who would have thought that with all the talk of short form communication eroding the English language, social media would make such a significant contribution? LOL.

I am attending the Digital Marketing and Media Summit in Melbourne today and just attended a great session from Mark Higginson, Director of Analytics at Nielsen Online.

Mark shared some interesting new research from Nielsen Online today about Facebook and social media usage here in Australia:

• 8 hours/month:  Australians spend on average 8 hours/month on Facebook
• Australia Leads: Australians spend more time on average per month using social media (any social media site, not just Facebook) than any other country (7:12 hours/month per Australian on average)
• 8 million Aussies: the current number of facebook.com users is 8 million Australians/month
• 13.7 million overall: there are 13.7 million active monthly Internet users in Australia

I think these statistics are remarkable because they show that Australians are doing more than checking out sites like Facebook and Twitter, setting up an account, and then abandoning the sites after a short amount of time. That’s a common refrain of non-believers out there. We Australians are, as Mark correctly observed, addicted.

Here are some resources for anyone interested in learning more about the landscape of Facebook + social media here in Australia:

• Facebook for Business:  presentation created by myself and Thomas Crampton on business strategies for Facebook. This was tailored to Asia Pacific and delivered as part of our partnership with the Wall Street Journal Asia.
• Australian Social Networking Jumps:  link to a Digital Media news story about how Australian social networking jumped by 29% – from Comscore, Ausgust 2009.
• History of the Australian Social Web: much-Dugg interactive timeline of the Australian social media and digital evolution
• DMMS09 Twitter Stream: feed of Tweets from the 2009 Digital Media & Marketing Summit
• Asia Digital Map Australia + Social Media Posts: all of the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence posts on Australia

Malaysia records 3.4 million Facebook users, one of the 10 fastest growing countries over the past week. www.checkfacebook.com