By Ben Haber
Today Racepoint Group is launching a new offering – Racepoint Labs – to help companies, communities, causes and countries leverage the power of social media. To mark this launch we sat down with W2 founder Larry Weber, to get his thoughts on what this means for the overall digital marketing landscape.
Racepoint Launches Racepoint Labs from Kyle Austin on Vimeo.
26 comments March 10th, 2010
By Ben Haber
College admissions can be one of the most difficult times in anyone’s life. It’s a process that offers little control and a lot of chance or dumb luck. Sure, you can work heard to earn good grades, participate in extracurricular activities and do well on the standardized tests, but when admissions staff is going through tens of thousands of submissions, there are a lot of people that may be equally as accomplished. The decision to accept one person over another can seem almost random, and many well-qualified people can be rejected from colleges that their peers are accepted into.
That is why Tufts University’s new policy of accepting YouTube videos is a blast of fresh air. For the first time, applicants can now share their personality, creativity and passions with admissions staff without the stress and nervousness of a sit-down interview. While some people are good writers (and are able to share in the personal essay), other people need different methods of showing who they are. Tufts use of social media is refreshing, especially in a process that can involve so much stress.
Hopefully more colleges will adopt Tufts’ policy and allow applicants the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities through multiple social media platforms that have become such a large part of our lives today. Of course, students must also be careful about what they upload to these sites, as every time of video and picture is available for admissions staff to see.
Below is one video that Tufts included on their admissions page as a demonstration of what they’re looking for.
4 comments February 23rd, 2010
By Kyle Austin
Last week, only a few days before Apple declared record sales for its iPhone, The White House entered the fray of iPhone applications. The administration’s iPhone app “puts the latest information from the White House in the palm of your hands,” according to its pitchman – White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.
In addition to listing out the applications functions, such as: accessing exclusive photos, videos and Webcasts; Gibbs takes the opportunity to take a lighthearted shot at the White House press corps.
“In fact, if you want to see me set the White House press corps straight every day, live, now there’s an app for that,” Gibbs coyly delivers before walking into a daily press briefing.
3 comments January 26th, 2010
By Ben Haber
As 2009 comes to an end, it’s time to look back at some of the memorable social media moments during the year. This is the first in a series of three posts that will look back at a few of the most entertaining and groundbreaking occurrences on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter this year.
RaceTalk’s Best of YouTube in 2009
1. The Wedding Dance Video: This was so popular that “The Office” did a spoof on it during their wedding episode when Jim and Pam got married.
2. United Breaks Guitars: After watching baggage people break his guitar while loading it onto the plane, this musician made a music video when United refused to play him for the damage.
3. Kayne West is a Jackass: First Kayne West decided to jump on stage and interrupt Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech, then President Obama called him a jackass. Both media clips made it to YouTube, where they were viewed by the masses.
4. Baby Dancing to Beyonce: This entertaining video was a hit on YouTube, quickly attracting more than 6 million views.
8 comments December 16th, 2009
By Kyle Austin
The above video has made its way around the PR blogosphere and Twittersphere, with people weighing in on both sides of the debate. First off, I’m a big fan of Jack O’Dwyer. He’s been doing this for 40 years and gets the industry. But as Bill Belichick, painfully proved on an even greater platform last night, even the best can be wrong with their decision making.
Jack makes the argument that PR people should only be dealing with other professionals (i.e. journalists) and not directly with consumers through social media. However, he seems to base this (from what I can get from the video) more on it being unfair for consumers, versus simply knocking its effectiveness. He makes the analogy to a pro-boxer challenging a citizen to a bar room fight to illustrate that. Maybe he wants to take the new FTC guidelines to another level???
If that truly is his argument then he’s really undervaluing the collective knowledge-base of consumers taking part in brand discussions on the Web. He’s also outdated in thinking that PR practitioners are trying to spin consumers through these new channels as they have in the past with journalists. Its a different channel, a different audience and a different voice altogether.
First of all, the majority of bloggers (and I’ll surmise avid Twitter users) are more affluent and and educated than the general population. 75% of bloggers have college degrees and 40% have graduate degrees. But more importantly, which Jack really misses, is they are taking part in a two-way conversation that they want to be a part of.
Razorfish’s recent study noted that 70% of connected consumers have read blogs produced by brands, 40% have friended a brand on Facebook or MySpace and 26% follow brands on Twitter. Consumers want this engagement, the voice, the inside scoop and ultimately the deals. There really isn’t a decision to be made. Your brand is part of social media and you can either try to influence that in a good way or let the discussion go on without out you.
The only argument left is who should own social media. To that argument I revert back to who currently produces content and has experience with reaching different audiences with different messages. Yes, that would be PR folks.
5 comments November 16th, 2009
By Kyle Austin
The Economist, which has been in the news lately for launching a pay-wall on its Website, has also begun to experiment with digital and social media.
One of its latest digital moves is a weekly online video series, which it is dubbing “Tea with The Economist.” Like every step the Economist has made in moving carefully into digital waters, the series is very true to the The Economist brand.
According to Beet.TV:
“The 10-15 minute videos are conducted by The Economist reporters and editors around the globe who pour tea and query their subjects.”
However, the The Economist isn’t attempting to turn this into an online version of Charlie Rose’s two-way conversations. In fact, true to the anonymity that the The Economist maintains for their bylines, the reporters are never shown on camera or identified.
2 comments October 16th, 2009
By Molly Galler
This morning Peter Shankman, PR guru and founder of Help A Reporter Out, tweeted “Social Media is nothing more than a platform to showcase customer service, whether good or bad. Are your CS priorities accurate?”
Customer service via social media is the top priority for electronics giant Best Buy as it ramps up its ad campaign for the holiday season. According to a piece by Saul Hansell in today’s New York Times, Best Buy is centering their entire holiday advertising campaign around their customer service Twitter handle @Twelpforce (Twitter + Help Force = Twelpforce).
The ads feature customers asking a question to a stadium full of blue shirt wearing Best Buy tech geeks while the Twitter web address is superimposed on the screen. While not all consumers are using Twitter (or even know what it is), Best Buy recognizes that a majority of their customers are gadget addicts who are likely very technologically savvy. With that in mind, Best Buy is reaching their customers where they are – using Twitter on their phones, lap tops and desk top computers.
Barry Judge, Best Buy’s Chief Marketing Officer commented to the New York Times, “ . . . many people who watch the commercial will have no idea what Twitter is. That’s O.K. The commercials stand on their own, but the Twitter reference adds a little post Web 2.0 sizzle for those in the know.”
The emergence of the Twelpforce in July of this year scored Best Buy a cover story on Tech Crunch. Since then the Twelpforce has earned nearly 13,000 followers and has answered an estimated 20,000 questions from interested consumers.
And Best Buy is not stopping there. The company has revamped their Facebook page to allow for easier feedback on products between users. The company also plans to release videos of 25 Christmas songs with new lyrics that talk about the best tech gifts for this season. The videos will be released online, using the Tiny URL service to shorten the links and make sharing easier on social media platforms. Can you hear it? “Jingle bells, buy a Dell. . .”
Best Buy has fully embraced social media by actively using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to allow consumers to engage with the brand, learn about new products and promotions, and access live customer service. When the company reports its Q4 sales numbers, surely this will have a significant and measurable impact.
To companies who fear the “untamable social media beast” I say, observe the Twelpforce and start taking notes.
7 comments October 1st, 2009
By Kyle Austin
Earlier this week Advertising Age took a look at how PR heads are shifting towards the center of marketing departments. The role shift at top levels evidence of a larger shift for communications and PR as a whole. The media meltdown, combined with the explosion of social media, has served as the great equalizer for the PR and marketing / advertising industries.
Corporations no longer able to leverage “old media” to reach mass or niche audiences with messages are moving their budgets online to new media channels. Channels that are up for grabs in the agency world. And guess what? PR agencies have the early leg up on owning these channels.
According to the Digital Readiness Report, completed by researcher Tom Smith, PRSA and iPressroom:
Capitalizing on the fact that social media is relationship-based, a top PR characteristic, and that we specialize in creating content, a big part of social media, it’s not that surprising.
However, a troubling stat caught my eye on Mashable earlier this week, given that PR and communications are leading the way with social media. An August 2009 survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education found that 84% of professionals using social media – in a variety of fields – don’t currently measure the ROI of their social media programs.
RED FLAG. No wonder the head of the PRSA is calling out the entire industry to establish measurement standards – Fast. The fallout of Madison Avenue, combined with the digital media evolution, is a huge opportunity for the communications and PR industry. One opportunity that we better get right – with measurement. If we’ve learned one thing from our peers in online advertising, it’s that today, companies pay for measurable ROI. While Google may not have been recession proof, it’s successful because it efficiently provides and measures ROI with its search marketing services. If we hope to move corporate communications where we believe it belongs – into a key component of marketing’s media planning stage, we better make numbers (more than 3) a top priority.
3 comments September 25th, 2009
By Molly Galler
Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are reporting today that Google Inc.’s YouTube is negotiating with several major Hollywood movie studios to begin offering users access to full-length films on the website (for a small fee, of course).
The average consumer visits YouTube to surf free video clips or upload personal videos to share with family and friends. If you could also utilize the site to stream newly released movies, why wouldn’t you?
Both YouTube and several Hollywood studio giants are banking that you will.
For YouTube itself, these kinds of partnerships represent a chance to move out of the red and head down the path toward profitability. The New York Times reports, “. . . much of YouTube’s audience visits the site to watch a random mix of clips generated by amateurs, which advertisers view with trepidation. As a result, YouTube has been on a long quest to obtain more professionally produced video that it can use to generate revenue and offset the enormous cost of streaming billions of free clips.”
For the movie studios, a deal with YouTube means a much wider, global audience for their films, which is critical as the sale of DVDs continue to plummet. The Wall Street Journal agrees, “Though many studios now sell and rent movies online through services such as iTunes and Amazon.com, that has yet to produce meaningful revenue. By cutting a deal with YouTube, which had nearly 428 million global visitors in June, according to comScore, it can potentially reach a much wider audience.”
While both YouTube and the proposed Hollywood studio partners stand to gain substantially if this deal gets the green light, other entertainments outlets such as Netflix, will need a new game plan to keep up.
Currently, Netflix has adapted to the changing media landscape by offering streaming video to its customers in addition to shipping the hard copy DVDs. As the demand for streaming video continues, will a site with only that one function be able to stand its ground?
If you are a Netflix subscriber, would you cancel your membership when videos become available for purchase on YouTube?
5 comments September 3rd, 2009
By Molly Galler
I triple dog dare you. Starbucks knows you can’t resist a competition.
Which is why today, Tuesday May 19th, they are challenging you to locate their new billboards in six major U.S. cities and be the first to tweet a photo of the ad.
Starbucks, like any other smart brand, is embracing the social media phenomenon that is Twitter. Twitter, the free micro blogging site, allows users to share their thoughts, musings, or in this case, sightings, with the online community.
There is no doubt that Twitter is the online manifestation of “word of mouth,” and Starbucks recognizes that word of mouth reviews are among the most powerful. Just ask any restaurant that has been slammed on the review site Yelp. In an interview with Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times, Chris Bruzzo, Starbucks’ vice president for brand, content and online, says:
“The idea for the Starbucks photo contest came from watching what people already do on Facebook and Twitter . . . Each year, people race to post the first photos of Starbucks shops decorated in red for the holidays on Flickr, people vie to post photos that include multiple Starbucks stores in the same shot. It shows a level of connection to our brand that we wouldn’t have concocted on our own.”
Starbucks can quantify the connection to their brand by their 183,000 followers on Twitter and their 1.5 million fans on Facebook. The company plans to continue their social media efforts, with a new YouTube video series featuring coffee experts talking about what makes Starbucks coffee unique.
The company has been hugely successful with YouTube in the past. Its biggest success being the November 2008 election advertising campaign (which started on TV and spread across the Web) that offered free coffee to voters on November 4th (RaceTalk’s own Ben Haber covered the news).
In her New York Times piece, Claire Cain Miller describes:
“On the Saturday before the presidential election, Starbucks sponsored a single 60-second television commercial on “Saturday Night Live” advertising a coffee giveaway on Election Day. Starbucks then posted the video online. By Tuesday, it was the fourth-most-viewed video on YouTube, and people were mentioning Starbucks on Twitter every eight seconds.”
With new ad campaigns utilizing Twitter and YouTube, and a massive following on Facebook, Starbucks is hoping to ride the social media train all the way to the bank against a new, golden-arched rival.
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock to miss its advertising barrage -McDonalds is now offering several varieties of coffee drinks and is putting their marketing dollars behind traditional television, print, radio and billboard ads (which Starbucks continues to leverage as well) to entice coffee fanatics to the home of the Big Mac instead.
So while it may be a level playing field on the advertising front, Starbucks clearly has a “social” leg up in the brewing coffee wars.
7 comments May 19th, 2009
