Where do we go from here?

What is the future of our ad industry?

"The house that advertising built was consumer packaged goods. They taught that detergents and soaps could be wrapped in emotion. You were a better mom, you were more American, you were a more elegant European if you used a certain type of hand soap. This is the house that advertising built. Last year [in] the house that advertising built, almost 90% of all CPG brands lost share, and two thirds lost revenue. Why? Because advertising sucks. And if you're wealthy you can opt out of advertising. We are now downloading "Modern Family" and paying two bucks for it from iTunes soley so that we can avoid the advertising. Advertising is becoming a tax only poor people pay."



Good talk by Scott Galloway, NYU Stern professor and founder of L2.

our baby is two million fans old

We inherited the Nescafe page at a few hundred thousand fans and a few weeks ago it hit two million. We celebrated this milestone at a Fans Day event held two Saturdays ago.

Our community has a way of making those of us working on the page feel so deeply rewarded. We hit a million fans on Christmas day last year, a great present to the brand and agency teams. Our engagement rate has remained within a fantastic average, even as the page has grown enormously. And now over two million people have agreed to keep conversations going with Nescafe.

What we have been allowed to to right on this brand 

• Pay attention to BITE-SIZED. It is difficult to allow little bits of content to speak for a brand, especially for traditional agencies who are used to "pasabog", "bigness" and executions that draw "libog" (as our Chairman often demands). This is completely valid but it doesn't mean that individual status updates that are culturally-relevant and even brand-focused can't draw attention, generate participation and develop affinity. 
• Think LONG-TERM. Instead of focusing on app or webisode one-offs, we have been able to craft year-long plans that have continuously built up to our current standing. I don't know if I would ever be able to prove this, but I imagine communities can feel when they are being engaged in a "promo" or "campaign" rather than in an ongoing conversation. And this might make fans more or less willing to stay involved. But our community has seen the commitment to keep the conversation going for 2+ years, and understand that the brand is committed for the long haul.
• Be open to STRATEGY-led initiatives. Nescafe Points and Nescafe Insights are two efforts I'm so proud of having been the planner for. It is amazing that we have been able to keep trying to change behavior and learn from our community. We are so lucky that our internal partners and clients allow Planners to have our own point-of-view.

• Allow creatives to PLAY. At the same time, our creatives have gotten their own play time as well! The second iteration of Points, Kapihan, and two recent videos (one starring digital sensation Petra and another featuring Ramon Bautista & Frank Magallona) are proof points to this.

Exciting times - we are now in the process of mapping out 2013. Here is hoping we can keep fans engaged and happy for a third year and counting.

Facebook is the new WWW

Last week I noticed that the Philippines had become the fifth most represented country on Facebook, with (then) just under 21 million Pinoys registered. I just checked again and less than a week later, that number has ballooned to 21.7 million.

That constitutes 24% of the total Philippine population. Not bad, especially for just one URL.

These staggering numbers have made Facebook a go-to channel for many brands and, ahem, ad agency strategic planners. Why not? We can reach a captive, engaged market and can geo- and age-target our drive-to-page materials. Even better, when consumers like our content, they can share them on their Walls and elicit an exponential number of eyeballs and views.

But as obvious as Facebook seems to have become as a standard digital channel recommendation, a new barrier seems to be emerging: Are brands that get on Facebook only now already too late in the game? Do they risk appearing like me-too's? Worse, will agencies that recommend branded Facebook pages appear uninsightful and lazy?

After all our marketing culture is fond of “owning” things – colors, seasons, occasions, time slots, entire mediums. I once got a brief that demanded a strategy that would allow our brand to “own the Internet”. (Not a joke!) Who owns Facebook, and if we can’t own it then should we even bother?

The answer is yes.

A few years ago we recommended branded web presence through websites that opened with WWW. All that has changed is that now we are recommending branded web presence through pages that open with FACEBOOK.COM.

In that sense we just need to re-frame our thinking and look at Facebook as a microcosm of the larger web. We had websites once but now that everybody is on Facebook, doesn't it make sense that we build a presence there?

What we like about this particular social network –

• Built-in community-building features
• What: Users can easily like a brand page and individual pieces of content or share their own.
• Where else you could get it: Your web developer can tell you how long it would take (very) to design a website that would duplicate the level of community engagement that already exists Facebook. And how much it would cost! (A lot.)
• A captive audience
• What: 21 million Pinoys & counting, who regularly visit. According to the Facebook fact sheet, 50% of their active users log in on any given day. One study claims that users view an average of 22 pages per visit. The best part? Users can immediately click on anything they find interesting.
• Where else you could get it: On TV or radio? OOH? Minus the click. Your media agency can give you more information.
• Share-ability
• What: Users can easily share content they find interesting – today the Cebu Pacific flight attendants, tomorrow the “California Girls” balikbayans who had too much Pinoy food (“Katy my lady, gutom ka na baby?”). Never 100% sure, but definitely viral potential.
• Where else you could get it: Through bloggers and YouTube, maybe Twitter. Check with your Digital Influence consultant. But I don’t think you could say that something has “gone viral” if it hasn’t passed through Facebook.
• Good Pages abound! (Will update with an actual list shortly/eventually.)
  

What we need to avoid –

The trick is not to rest on Facebook’s community features. A wall and an information page won’t do anything for a brand without regularly updated content and conversation. Just as if we were planning a brand website we need to create a reason that anyone would care to visit our (profile) page.

Whether on Facebook or not, consumers will look for a compelling reason to engage with us – something useful, entertaining or informational. That bit of digital strategy hasn't changed, only the entry url – from www.YOURBRAND.com to facebook.com/YOURBRAND. This might sound obvious but it recently helped me open the minds of a few clients. Maybe this kind of explanation can help you, too.

the search is on for cute boots

I love this because it reinforces my point about Facebook-as-news-source.

Surveillance via Facebook

Facebook is the new “mass media”, and fulfills an important media function: Surveillance.

photo by gerlos	via PhotoRee

There are many communication theories that cover our relationship to media. A quick search on Google reminded me that it was Lasswell (he had the “who, says what, in which channel, to whom, and with what effect” model) who theorized that mass media fulfills, among others, a surveillance function, and gives the audience information about what is going on in the world that “everybody” knows. In the former “mass” media age, this pertained to news – as it relates to me today, updates on the identity of the Times Square bomber or the race for Vice President in the Philippine elections.

Like many communication theories, Lasswell’s has received criticism for being too simplistic and general. But I’ve always rememebered and agreed with the idea of surveillance. I think, regardless of mass media, that we are observant beings who have varying levels of voyeuristic tendencies – everybody gossips. And as social networks like Facebook have expanded in terms of both reach (currently over 10M Philippine users) and granularity (status updates, likes, comments, privacy settings, etc), there is a lot more information going around that we can monitor.

Surveillance & me
When I was in college, I was pretty “tsismosa”, that’s Tagalog for “gossip”. In our group I liked knowing what was going on – most especially in the love / lust / like category. When we went out drinking, people would wait for me to get tipsy in case I spilled the latest tsismis (gossip). Friends actually ended up revealing a lot of secrets that they assumed I’d already heard. Good times.

Since I started working, I’ve lost touch with a lot of people and have certainly regressed in terms of knowing what is going on with everyone. I no longer have the latest news on who is getting together, breaking up, who is looking for a job, in danger of getting fired, in the process of being pirated, etc.

Surveillance via Facebook
But since more Filipinos started getting on Facebook in 2007, it has become my news central. It tells me who has resigned, who is travelling and where, who has broken up or is getting engaged, what bands are coming to town. From the latest Farmville acquisitions, or the extra Café Word stock, to the sports / elections / entertainment updates, Facebook is a great way to survey what is going on in my social sphere. Event invitations tell me the must-see concerts or the must-attend parties, relationship status tell me who is newlly single and on the rebound, tech-savvy friends give the latest must-have gadgets, and pop-culture junkies tell me what movies, music or YouTube clips not to miss. From thousands of miles away, I’ll even find out which of my officemates are being subjected to torturous overtime.

I don’t like to read the news (hence the extremely “personal” connection to the surveillance function!) but I am even more attuned now to current events. If it is important, someone will post it on Facebook. That is actually how I found out about the Times Square bombing or read vice presidential candidate Mar Roxas’ supporters praying that he would somehow still win the VP race.

Mass, i.e. Many-to-many
Facebook is not a “mass medium” in terms of old-school broadcast that distributed one set of content to a mass of people, one-to-many. But it is “mass” in the sense that it broadcasts content to millions. Only the content comes from all the different users, making it a many-to-many mass medium.
In addition, the fact that the “many” are my personal contacts actually helps to validate “news” since I know that I can trust most of them. I am also usually aware of the different personal value systems and the biases each one may have. And even taking that into account, there is no longer a need to depend on an “omnicious” news commentary.

Maybe it’s just me. But paying attention to my Facebook news feed makes me feel like I’ve got a handle on what’s going on in the world, coming from a network that I actually care about – my social graph.

digital marketing: channel strategy

I used to link my Twitter & Facebook status updates – when I updated one, it would automatically push it to the other. I would write “I had the best time last night!” on Facebook, and it would go out to the Twittersphere, and all of my tweets about the latest digital conference were blasted to my Facebook contacts. Off-strat?

There are so many social media platforms and it’s hard to keep track of, let alone maintain, dozens of profiles – social networks, professional networks, blogs, microblogs, lifestreams and most recently, social mapping services. Even Yahoo! and Google now ask for status updates. We want to be everywhere at once, but actually keeping up appearances on all these sites can become complicated and time-consuming.

So we turn to sync – auto-updating Twitter and Facebook with one entry on Plurk. Or we register for services like Quub that update multiple sites at once. 

Channel strategy

Each of us has an online personality manifested by presence on different web channels – Facebook, Multiply, LinkedIn, a blog, etc. And we need to recognize that each channel has (or should have) a different objective. LinkedIn is a professional channel. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube could lean more toward professional or personal, depending on our contacts and how we use the service. But to keep ourselves sane, it helps to figure out what we are doing – and what we hope to achieve – on each site.

Most people are in it purely for personal reasons – connect with friends and broadcast the latest farm acquisition. But as more people turn to the web for professional branding, the lines blur .

What I’ve done is to map out (a) the key platforms where I want to participate, and (b) what kind of communication on each, depending on whether I have, or want to have, more of a personal or professional network on each one.

 Personal vs. Professional 

I finally decided, for example, that Facebook should stay a private channel. It is a site where I interact with a lot of close friends, which isn’t necessarily something I want to expose to a potential employer (theoretically :P). I also have so many notes and photos that have nothing to do with my professional self, not things I want to come out about me on a Google search. So Facebook is just for personal contacts and people I actually know! Most of my Flickr photos are private as well.

Twitter, on the other hand, is supposed to be a professional channel – digital questions and thoughts, Foursquare updates (a grey area – personal details since they’re location-based but also professional for now, since participation is a digital thing?), links to blog posts. Not to say that I don’t shout out to friends and update about other interests (#nyc, #glee, #yankees!) as well. Other professional channels that I want to build on are LinkedIn and Posterous.

Figuring this out has helped me decide what content to post on which site.  

Brand channel strategy 

Brands need to take the time to do this kind of segmentation as well. The line isn’t as clear as Personal vs. Professional, but communication should still change depending on the channel. Simply syncing Twitter, Facebook and a corporate blog with one-size-fits-all content is a terrible strategy. As a consumer, I think that brands that have exactly the same content on Facebook and their corporate blog are lazy. Users should get added value from engaging with a brand on multiple touchpoints. Cross-linking is of course a great practice, but communication can’t end there.

Here are some ideas to get started on strategizing communication on the most basic platforms:

• Facebook: Take advantage of the community and easily visible reactions to your content. Ask users questions and post things that they can “Like”. Maximize tabs with unique and engaging apps.
• Twitter: Great for 1:1 conversations and short-form updates about brand, product and industry news. Great way to announce links to new content on other platforms.
• Corporate Blog: Longer-form content about brand, product, category or industry issues. It is a great way to build credibility within your field.
• Posterous or Delicious: Re-posts of industry news.

Trial-and-error, but start somewhere 

There are no hard-and-fast rules and I think most brands will have to try several tactics across the board before finding out what really works. But getting out there and trying is what is important.

I read an article today about Boeing’s reaction to a letter from an eight-year-old who volunteered ideas about a plane design. Their initial response was to send him a letter officially saying that they weren’t accepting his suggestion, probably an SOP response formulated by their legal team. People criticized Boeing at first, but they jumped in to the discussion and explained their situation to consumers, “We’re expert at airplanes but novices in social media. We’re learning as we go."

photo by Great Beyond	via PhotoRee

organizing my digital self

Just got an invite for Yahoo! Meme. Here is my profile! (Let me know if you want an invite.) Not sure what I really have to say that would be all that different from what I'm already saying here and my other blog.

In addition to that, I also manage Twitter, Plurk and Facbook accounts. I've really de-prioritized Multiply since people only seem to do re-posts there. Also haven't been taking that many pictures, and that was really the point of that site, at least for me.

And now there are so many more "lifestream" sites and I just don't know what to do with my Posterous, Tumblr... Not to mention the social bookmarking sites, playlist sites, scrapbooking sites, professional social networking sites...

Anybody else encountering the same problems?

Web Site Story: An Internet Musical

CollegeHumor.com brings West Side Story into the Internet age, with Tony spotting Maria on Facebook.

“I’m on Facebook, I’m on Facebook

And my Facebook updates with my Tweets

So I Twitter, and then everybody knows my deets.”

Philippine website data by Alexa

I check Alexa every so often to check out the site trends in the country. Hadn't checked in a few months but found a few things interesting:

- Facebook has reached the "mass"es. While Yahoo!, Friendster, Google and YouTube have been in the top five for quite some time, there is a new site at #5: Facebook! Wonder how this corresponds to the present number of Filipino users on Facebook... since I heard last year that there were fewer than 1M people on the network.

We can also get a few clues about our most popular online activities:

- Search: Yahoo (#1), Google.com.ph (#3) - Though not sure if these rankings include Mail, Answer, Docs, etc pages.

- Social networking: Friendster (#2), Facebook (#5) and Multiply (#7), Tagged (#15).

- Media sharing / viewing: YouTube (#4), Imeem (#17 - though I guess this counts as a social networking site as well!)

- Blogging / Blog reading: Blogger (#8), Wordpress (#13)

- Photo sharing / viewing: Although Photobucket (#12) is apparently more popular than Flickr (#18)

- Do targeted web banners work? Travian.ph (which seems like some kind of MMORPG) is #14 today. I see the Travian banner ads on so many video streaming sites like Surfthechannel and Yidio, but I've never clicked. Interestingly enough, the messaging is always properly targeted and written in Tagalog! Maybe that strategy is working.

- Microblogging is on the rise. Twitter now #27 & Plurk at #54.

- Local sites in the Top100: Inquirer is still the highest ranked (#37), followed by Philstar & (#57), PEP (#61), GMA (#63), PEX (#65), Smart (#78) >> We are still interested in the news and gossip but apparently we are now interested in telecom info as well.

- Hardcore gaming sites seem to have declined... Levelupgames (#40), Garena (#60), Egames (#70), while casual games seem to be more popular - Y8 (#8), Zynga (#34).

- New search engines. Some people are using Bing (#48) and some people are stalking using Spock (#64)!

- What other content are we looking for? Onemanga (#19), Friendster-layouts (#23), MP3codes (#58), deviantART (#66), Reference (#68), MetroLyrics (#92)

This must of course be taken with a grain of salt, since Alexa can only generate data from users who have downloaded their toolbar.