You've got the comments section. And the RSS feed (possibly with advertising). And the Digg/Stumbleupon/Newsvine/del.icio.us/Twitter-it capability. Check, check, check. What about ?:
video
"Most Popular"
Synchronous Chat
Email alerts
Email newsletter
Birmingham Post journalist Joanna Geary has put together a thorough report on the interactive-ness of UK newspapers on her blog. It makes for some very revealing reading about what it takes to truly call your site interactive. She counts 22 interactive features that appear on some or all UK news sites and ranks the sites based on how many of these tools they utilise. BBC, Reuters UK and Sky top the list with the Telegraph, The Times Online, Economist and The Guardian fall in behind -- and all the way down to the Midlands Business Insider that has one lonely feature - email alerts.
On the same day that News Corp. warned that MySpace " will fail to hit its revenue target this year as advertisers struggle to judge the commercial value of making on-line friends," along comes a message from Friends Reunited (remember it?) into my inbox announcing that "Friends Reunited has changed! We’re now much more sociable and completely free".
When I took a quick peak at the site this morning the first thing I
noticed was an inbox mail. It was from 2003 - the last time I had
visited the site! It appears I'm not alone. Checking profiles of former
schoolfriends none of them had been updated since I last visited
Friends.
Can Friends Reunited really recapture the community it once had? Not with a moribund community. After all, there's a lot more to social communication than just declaring yourself social.
Any time you tread into the area of accountability and free speech online, you're just asking for trouble. I couldn't resist today. Jim Brady,the executive director of Washington Post's online division, is advocating a radical approach to introduce a level of accountability into the public message boards that trail below the Post's online articles. Brady would like to see those who abuse his site's terms of use, and those who violate its editorial standards to be barred from commenting on the site for good.
As Brady tells News.com's Greg Sandoval: "I think part of the problem is that people aren't held accountable on
the Web...People say things online they would never say
when disagreeing with someone at the dinner table. I think heated
debate is fine, but when there are (flame wars), many people won't take
part for fear they will be attacked and bashed over the head with the
(Internet-equivalent) of a steel pipe."
Of course, this draws protests from free speech advocates. But, there is really a greater issue involved here. It's the need to bring a level of accountability to online public forums, primarily to eradicate some of the obnoxious, racist, xenophobic, unapologetic spam marketing or destructive spin that ends up in these forums. That's my view, which I tackle at greater length in my Times column today.
In our previous post we began our countdown of the top 10 brands in terms of how their reputation is influenced by YouTube. Here is the second part of the countdown.
5, UNILEVER(803 videos)
"Dove Evolution" - Viewed
6,727,556 times (2,426 comments)
Dove created a splash throughout the cosmetics industry in October,
2006 with its daring "evolution" advert, revealing the dirty little
secret about glamour ads: the end product -- in this case a model's
face blown up to billboard size -- is a polished piece of fiction. It
was created to promote a worthwhile Unilever initiative: the Dove Real
Beauty Workshop for Girls, an effort to destroy some of the destructive
myths of the trade that plague young, figure-obsessed girls. Follow-up
adverts by Unilever and its agency, Ogilvy, tackled the same theme,
triggering a viral branding phenomenon: "the evolution" (followed by
"the onslaught") advert have attracted over 10 million viewers and
triggered over 5,000 comments. But Dove's best intentions drew the
wrong kind of attention too. There is now a whole sub-genre of parody
"evolution" and "onslaught" videos on YouTube, featuring the mutilation
of French models, the gorging of some poor pathetic bloke and the
disfiguration of a pumpkin, to name but three. Those are somewhat
harmless. Greenpeace, however, used the same theme music and quick-cut
montage from the originals to create "Dove Onslaught(er)" (243,000 views in just eight days) to alert
viewers of the impact of Dove's sourcing of palm oil from firms that
are allegedly clear-cutting the rain forests to get at it.
Impact on Reputation: - 6 (Has Unilever been hoist by its own viral video petard?)
There are now 12 different video variations with over one million views
on the exploding Diet Coke and Mentos YouTube meme made famous by
Eeepybird. This graphic spoof shows a guy chewing a pack of Mentos and
then swigging Diet Coke with disastrous, dark comic effects. At the time Diet Coke
wasn't that impressed. "We
would hope people want to drink [Diet Coke] more than try experiments
with it..[this] craziness with Mentos ... doesn't fit with the brand
personality"a Coke spokesman told the Wall Street Journal. Mentos were much happier. "We are tickled pink by it," said the company adding the value of
online buzz was worth "over $10 million."
Impact on Reputation: +5 (One year on, Coca Cola gets it. "The biggest takeaway [from the Diet Coke-Mentos video] was
consumers own our brands," says Carol Kruse, vp of global
interactive marketing at Coke. Today the company is joining the social media conversation.)
The top viewed video when you simply search "McDonalds" is a goofy rap homage to the brand -
"Supersize Me" said he's had enough of it, But how is it bad for my heart if I'm in love with it?" - that's been viewed 3,110,588 times. But that offering can't compete with this all-time McDonalds' rap video where a group of friends try to order a very happy meal through rhyme at a drive-through window.
Britney, Beyonce and Pink in skimpy gladiator costumes
singing the Queen hit was a hugely successful TV ad well before it was
recorded and added to YouTube (not by Pepsi we should add). Then it
took on a life of its own.
Impact on Reputation: +8 (YouTube might be the channel of the people
but celebrity content still rules even if you might have seen it on TV
before.)
The Brazilian footballing great receives a new set of boots and then
puts on a ball control masterclass in this handheld "home movie" style
viral video produced by Nike and uploaded to YouTube on Nike Soccer's
own channel.
Impact on Reputation: +10 (This sleight of foot video was produced for
and distributed only on YouTube. In fact it's the only "corporate
commercial" in the top 100 most-viewed YouTube videos. Its success lies
in the fact that it actually feels like a YouTube video. A good example
of a company understanding its audience.)
Every time we do social media strategic reviews for clients we can't help but note the growing influence of YouTube on a company's reputation.
So, ahead of our Social Media Influence conference we decided to compile our own YouTube Corporate Top
10 list. We've chosen 10 of the biggest global brands with the help of Business Week's annual top 100 brand guide. All of the following videos appear within the first 10
results in a search of the company name, each one has been viewed over
1 million times and each has generated hundreds of comments.
Here then, in reverse order, is part one of Social Media Influence's YouTube
Corporate Top 10.
While you're watching, ask yourself this question -
Do you know how your company looks on YouTube?
Car brands do particularly well on YouTube especially if a, they go
really fast b, they are involved in spectacular crashes c, they are
incredibly expensive d, all of the above. That said this Toyota clip is
a roaring success for none of these reasons: instead it benefits from
being the star of one of Top Gear's most famous stunts in which our
heroes try unsuccessfully to destroy a Toyota pick up truck (including
the now infamous moment where Jeremy Clarkson rams the truck into a
tree).
Impact on Reputation - +9 (Toyota's tough guy reputation reinforced and Top Gear cred to boot)
The home furnishing powerhouse has a reputation for quirky informality
but it probably didn't bank on it's German colleagues taking the piss
out of a traditional Swedish Midsummer festival in a TV ad. It was
quickly pulled from TV but lives on online in a strangely long format for an ad.
Impact on Reputation: 0 (Have you ever eaten at an Ikea restaurant?)
Popular Mechanics calls Microsoft's Surface
"the coffee table that will change the world" - a futuristic vision of
home computing that does away with keyboard and mouse. It has the
techies buzzing with both praise and a bit of ridicule. This video
morphs both sentiments into a funny product preview of the Surface. As
the narrator intones: "In the future getting tanked with your
friends is going to be a whole lot more fun because you'll be sitting
at a table that makes something cool happen every time they bring a
drink....which you'll want to do over and over".
Impact on Reputation: +5 (Imitation = flattery even when takes pot shots
at Redmond's design prowess. Could have been far worse - check out the
next most viewed offering, "Microsoft designs the iPod".)
What happens when you've spent millions on a slightly racy Superbowl ad
and then the censor killjoys decide to ban it? The ad finds its way
onto YouTube of course and gains cult status along with a whole new
audience.
Impact on Reputation: +7 (This is manna from heaven for YouTube fans.)
Admittedly the number one viewed Disney-themed video actually is a clip of "A
Whole New World" from "Aladdin" but not far behind is this
not-so-family friendly mashup of Disney clips and a wonderfully rude Avenue Q song.
Impact on Reputation: - 8 (Perhaps not as embarrassing as having the
15-year old star of your top-selling pre-teen franchise pose semi-clad
for Vanity Fair but surely not what Uncle Walt had in mind when he
said: "Movies
can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the
realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal
adulthood.")
From Ad Age: PR biggie Edelman launches Edelman Studios, "a virtual studio that will link emerging talent and professional talent
with brands and companies aiming to connect with consumers in new ways.
"The studio will solicit and develop creative content -- from TV shows
to film shorts and webisodes -- from screenwriters, producers and
directors who will have a shot at competing for assignments from
heavy-hitting marketers."
The boundaries of PR, marketing, advertising and, oh yes, contract publishing gets muddier by the day.
Bernhard has beaten me to the bar with his Brew Blog post which covers most of what I was going to say.
There's one more thing that interests me though and that's how Miller is using it "power to publish" to get ahead of the competition.
Increasingly the point of differentiation for brands online is going to be the original stories they can tell and content they can produce. That might take the form of conversational microsites or fully-blow online contract publishing.
The Miller model is different as this paragraph from the WSJ makes clear:
Brew Blog is the brainchild of Paul Pendergrass and Pete Marino,
communications consultants for Miller who wanted the brewer to have
more influence over what's covered in the industry. In 2006, they
recruited Mr. Arndorfer from Advertising Age and told him to cover the
sector like a beat reporter would.
Except a beat reporter would normally profess some level of objectivity or at the very least no outright allegiance to one major brand. Brew Blog model, owned by Miller, surely can't make those claims and while it does break news about the competition it also creates further problems for anyone hoping to find transparency in "news" online.
The $80 billion U.S. beer market is truly cut-throat, ideal turf for an insidery, tell-all blog that covers the latest maneuvers of the biggest brewers Anhueser-Busch, Miller Brewing and Adolph Coors.
One blog that has been terrorising the market leader, Anhueser-Busch (maker of the world's least-drinkable lager, Budweiser) is Brew Blog. Last week, it reported with remarkable detail what appears to be an aggressive AB pricing push this summer, discounting its Bud Light brand to restore its place in the market. "Will pricing be a way to accomplish that?", the blog asks in a post last week.
How does Brew Blog know so much about the beer industry and the potential movements of the market leader? It's written by James Arndorfer, a former reporter and now employee of AB's biggest rival, Miller. According to the Wall Street Journal, Brew Blog leaked the news that AB was launching a new brew for the summer, Budweiser American Ale, ahead of AB's press launch.
Here's an interesting stat to start the week. Forrester predicts the Enterprise 2.0 market -- companies spending on everything from collaborative social networking tools to RSS to consumer payment systems utilising popular social networks (something I wrote about earlier this year for The Times Online) -- will top $4.6 billion within the next five years. A thanks to ReadWriteWeb for pointing this out.
If all this is still a but fuzzy, we're covering this in-depth on 4 June at SMI. The details are here:
IN THE WORKPLACE & BEHIND THE FIREWALL
By
now, the corporate Intranet and its control-heavy, alienating mode of
communicating should well and truly be dead. Wikis and social network
are revolutionising communication and collaboration in the enterprise,
breaking down internal walls, organisational structures and
geographical barriers. Yet, at the same time, your interns are
mobilising on Facebook. Some embarrassing snaps from the company
holiday party are still circulating on Flickr and a spoof of the big
brand campaign is attracting a crowd on YouTube. Welcome to the
workplace in the Web 2.0 era where what once stayed behind the firewall
is now being played out for all the world to see. Is this forum of
individual assertiveness a platform to discover tomorrow's leaders or
could it sink the company's image? This panel will discuss the
essential components required for the successful adoption of social
software in practical business settings and identify the pitfalls of
allowing the self-expression of social media forums into the workplace.
Jeff Jarvis this week devotes his Guardian column to a subject we have been following and which is guaranteed to be a dominant theme of discussion at our upcoming Social Media Influence Conference. The topic is how companies are incorporating the feedback and criticism of their customers into their own decision-making through the use of group forums and company social networks.
No company has taken more of a beating in the Blogosphere than Dell Inc. In recent years angry bloggers have swarmed en masse against Dell for unresponsive customer service. Starbucks has 14,000 videos - many of them lampooning its ubiquitous presence or criticising its ethical stance - that have been posted to YouTube, (nearly one for every store on the planet). Then there's GM, the grand old car company that is struggling in a consumer market dominated by high-oil and environmental concerns.
What did these major corporations, with a combined annual sales of nearly a quarter-trillion dollars, do to address the consumer backlash? They launched online forums and social networks, asking their most vocal critics, customers and would-be customers to direct their concerns, snipes and kudos in a single place for all the world to read and join in. This is the brave new world of social media corporate communications where customer relations management is as important as traditional press relations.
Today, Starbucks employs 40 in-house experts to mine its new social forum, My Starbucks Idea, for new ways to conduct business, from instituting recyclable cups to loyalty cards and free Wifi. Similarly, General Motors has launched GMNext, a network of blogs and podcasts written by some of GM's most knowledgeable employees discussing upcoming models and eco innovations. The automaker even launched a wiki asking customers to help write GM's corporate history. And what about Dell? Fresh off their "Dell Hell" fiasco the PC maker launched Ideastorm where customers can lob suggestions (not always in the friendliest tone) about features they'd like to see in upcoming models, be it standardised power cables that could be used for different models to back-lit keyboards.
In each case, these companies have a stated goal of implementing customer feedback into their future business planning.
It's not just these three. Telecoms, media and the big accounting firms all are monitoring social media platforms daily to identify the influencers among their consumer base. This is not simply a defensive measure; they are looking for customers and brand advocates who have smart ideas about how companies can better conduct their business.
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