Pringles wrote on Joahniito's wall..???

Today, as always, I logged into my Facebook account, and the first thing that I saw was... “Changes to the Home page are coming soon”. But what are those changes?

First, the home page will have general news and filters to allow you to choose the information, friend lists, and applications that you want to see. You will also be able to share the content on the home page with your friends. The Facebook pages (the ones for brands) will be like a “normal” profile and instead of being apart; they will be mixed with the human friends’ profiles on the social graphs.

And what are the implications for marketers? Now, the brands won’t be restricted to only use “pages”, now they will have the same opportunities that Facebook users have, control profile, communication and publishing posts on people’s home pages!!! Are brands prepared for that "power"?

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All of these changes by Facebook are designed to put more information into the home page. But I think that it is really different to be able to see that your high school friend has tagged you on a photo than reading that Pepsi has a new image. I just hope not to have my homepage full of ads on March 11, when these changes will have started, because seriously I would “unfriend” all the brands if they annoy me.

I'll add an image that I found today and i liked it.

Juan Francisco

I’m a Skittles’ Fan!!!

Today I decided to become a Skittles’ fan! The reason... I logged into my Facebook account this morning and I saw that 6 of my friends had just become Skittles’ “fans”, I remembered all the cool colors of the candies & the nice package and I became a fan too. But, sincerely I have just bought them like tree times in all my life. Right now, Skittles’ Facebook account has 586,132+ fans. Even though they can’t translate fans = sales, it could give them an idea if people are coming to the site and choosing to engage at a deeper level.

Skittles’ website is trying to link different social-media sites in a menu that floats on any of the social networks. Depending on the customer’s behavior, the home page could be the brand’s Twitter or Facebook site, the video games are on Flickr, and the video media is Skittles’ Youtube page. This is a risk that the company is taking because they can’t control the customers’ actions or comments, on the other hand they can participate on the conversations and “talk” directly to the customers.

The brand can measure if the site’s style is working or not by the number of facebook “friends” or the comments on walls and Youtube videos. I think Skittles has applied one of the e-marketing principles “take advantage of others resources” creating a platform that includes the most successful social networks in one website. I should highlight that they did this with a minimal budget spent.

Bringing social tools into Skittles’ website was right, but the brand needs to offer something else after the social media experience to really translate the online succes on sales at the point of purchase. I have to go; I need to grab some skittles…

Juan Francisco

And the winner is... Social Media

I am not a big fan of The Academy Awards, but I can’t deny that movies’ fans and advertisers pay a lot of attention to them. Why talking about this on an e-marketing blog? …As I mentioned on a previous post, marketing is everywhere!

Nielsen information shows that the movie with largest adspend on the United States was “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. Advertising is an important factor for selling theater tickets, but nowadays social media offers “free” word of mouth that can be as effective as the traditional advertising. New Media Strategies and Bloggasm showed that during Oscar’s night the film with the most mentions on Twitter and Blogs was the Best Picture winner, “Slumdog Millionaire”.

Twitter Mentions:

1. Slumdog Millionaire: 6,369
2. Milk: 3,617
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: 1,110
4. The Reader: 814
5. Frost/Nixon: 543

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Blog Mentions:

1. Slumdog Millionaire: 28,909
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: 20,939
3. Milk: 20,676
4. The Reader: 16,123
5. Frost/Nixon: 8,341

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We can notice that advertising is still important, but marketers need to pay attention to e-marketing channels because the communication that they provide can come directly from the final customer. Today’s challenge is to design a strong marketing plan that mixes offline and online channels effectively.

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Juan Francisco

"If You Seek Britney"

TV, Radio, Magazines, Newspapers, Billboards, Websites, Google, Youtube, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs … Britney Spears is everywhere!

Her new album, new single, and new world tour need promotion. She and her staff have wisely used offline and online channels to advertise them. Let’s talk about her online campaign to see how her staff applies the basic e-marketing concepts.

Listening is to monitor your customers’ conversations between themselves. Is to listen to their needs and wants from a trustable source of information. There are lots of websites and forums dedicated to the pop star on the web. Spears’s staff follows the most important webs to know and “listen” the customers, what do they want and what do they expect. They have updated surveys that could be useful for choosing the tour “set list” or the next single.

Talking is to stimulate conversations between customers and participate on them giving subtle messages. Britney’s official website (britneyspears.com) has a blog. On this blog, Britney’s staff members post news and messages, and they can receive feedback with the followers’ comments. By providing a space for communication they are “talking” directly with the customers and this is helpful to “engage” them. In addition, she has facebook and twitter accounts to “talk” with her “friends”. Actually, on the website they have a “friend Britney” banner where all the links to add her to your social network.

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Energizing is about promoting your product/service with your enthusiastic customers’ help. Britney’s site is using energizing too; it has an application for buying tickets for the tour that can be added to Social Network’s accounts. They added a “grab it” tag to it. With these they are encouraging her fans to place it on their sites, so other fans can see it. Using energizing they want to increase the sales and advertising for free.

Customization/individualization is when your product or service satisfies individual needs, and costumers feel important because they perceive it as unique. Britney’s online store sells calendars and customers can personalize them, choosing size, color, and other features to fit each customers likes.

Interactivity is used with some online contests that the website has. Some examples are” wallpaper design contest”, or “create a history for a Britney’s video”. This interaction increases the website traffic and the fans enthusiasm to talk about Britney, this causes word of mouth.

With this example, we can notice that applying most of the e-marketing concepts at the same is possible, if Britney can, you can!

Juan Francisco

My Mom????!!!

Surfing on a friend’s facebook profile I found a post from his aunt and I was really surprised (I suppose he was even more surprised!), I started to think on what I would do if my mom had a facebook account, and according to statistics this could be possible!

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An independent Facebook blog published that 45% of the Facebook’s users on US are ages 26 and older, and nearly 25% are over age 34. In fact, the fastest-growing demographic group on Facebook is women ages 55 and older.

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The only difference is that older people uses FB with less frequency, although 5% of users ages 50 and older logged in 30 or more times per month, the majority signed on only from one to four times per month.

But is time to start thinking… are these target customers on Facebook’s goals? Or are they a new problem that facebook needs to face?

Juan Francisco

Social Media

Social media is a world wide phenomenon. If we want to use it for marketing we need to understand it. This video explains in an easy way the power of social media. Today any individual with internet access can express and share his opinions and thoughts to the world. Marketers need to be able to deal with this, not only handle it; they need to take advantage of it!

According to an emarketer's report, the social networking audience is growing rapidly. It is expected that by 2013 more than one-half of Internet users will be regular social network users. But not only the amount of consumers is growing; the degree of their involvement is increasing too. To take advantage of these trends, Social Networks need to work in an effective advertising model.

Facebook, Myspace and Twitter are popular social networks where companies and celebrities (music, politics, sports...) are creating and using their accounts for free marketing. Starbucks, Lindsay Lohann, and Cristiano Ronaldo are just few examples of "successful” social media users. So, if you don’t have a Facebook account, what are you waiting for? Just see if the social media network, your profile ,and the image that you want to show to the world match (:

Juan Francisco