Propagation Planning

What's Next in Media

Whats Next In Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: engagement content)

I found this presentation on my friends Blog Think Tank Treasury and thought the presentation also validated the use of Social Media and how to engage tribes and communities that already exist.

Razorfish files Patent to measure social influence

While I like the thinking that Razorfish is doing on the subject, I don't think it's very social to file a methodology Patent? Those never seem to hold up anyway. So if you will indulge the geekness that will soon follow I'll share with you the methodology that they describe here:

Core Questions Razorfish Tried To Answer:

• What is the value of a key influencer? 
• How viral or how many generations of influence has my social media application achieved?
• What is the value of someone who receives a social application from a friend versus someone who receives it via media or a paid seeding strategy?

"Our solution is the Incrementing Action Tag which is a set of functions within a social media application that creates a variable that may be read externally based on where the user acquires the application.  When a user downloads the application from the original source, the Incrementing Action Tag notes the source and assigns the downloader the value of first generation (or one). When another downloader obtains the application from somewhere other than the original source (e.g. a friend, other website, etc.), the Incrementing Action Tag looks at the variable (or generation) assigned to the current source and increments it by one; thus making the next downloader generation two or other appropriate generation number.

The Incrementing Action Tag is thus able to identify (via a cookie and unique identifier and not through personally identifiable information) and track social media, identify how far removed (generation) cookies are from the original source of the social media, and identify key influencers (again no PII- see note above) of users of social media. In essence, this technology enables our agency to create a system that allows us to value and reach key influencers across the Internet, regardless of property." 

Targeting Existing Tribes - San Diego Comic Con

Brands have a decision to make, either create their own tribes or find existing tribes to seed propagation ideas. One way Brands are finding existing tribes is at San Diego Comic Con where the participants know what it means to be a fan and what fandom is all about. Many products and entertainment properties are now launched at this massive event where people immediately start blogging and talking about their excitement about the "first look" that they just saw. Here is a video about the launch of Heroes in July of 2006, the first 2 minutes are interesting and you can see how they openly share their propagation strategy:

Another HBO Propagation Example

HBO does another great job of using Propagation Planning techniques to promote their shows. As any great Flight of the Conchords would know, Mel is the president of the fan club. Mel has invited anyone at flightlipdub.com to record themselves lip syncing to the amazing song "Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros." These are the rapper names for the two main characters, very creative if I might point out.

HBO shares their music assets with their fans, they spend lots of time engaging and experiencing the life of a Concord, and then upload the video. The winner will be shown on HBO as a symbol of fanhood and passion.

Thanks to all the people at Deep Focus who give us great creative examples!

People Trust Each Other

I found this article that had stats that we have all seen before, but the view points and rationale are new and interesting to me:

77% trust email from someone they know. Makes sense, people we know in our truly intimate of circles are those who we keep closest. Websites that have a “Share this via” email may be a good start, using the vendor ShareThis is a good start. Also, this suggests that marketers should start to think about letting other types of content be easily shared from email address to email. We’ve always known that email was the first digital social network that mattered.

60% trust consumer product ratings and reviews: I find both logical but we’ve some ways to go. Right now, we’re leaning on reviews from individuals that may not be in our trust circle. So as the social graph and eCommerce engines start to tie, we’ll soon have access to reviews of products from our direct network of folks we really know. Razorfish has eloquently helped to visualize this concept with this presentation.

50%: Say they trust portals/search engines: In Google We Trust, is that Charlene Li frequently used to tell me, and it still holds true. When you look closely, the search engine results in Google are really social recommendations. How so? The Google algorithm (while I’m over simplifying) puts a great deal of weight on how humans organize, link, and create content.

The full article can be read here by Jeremiah Owyang.

It's all fun and games until the lawyers get involved

When I was at MIT in Boston last month I had a chance to get to know some people at Undercurrent, a digital think tank in New York. One of the strategists put together an amazing paper on the group of fans that acted as Mad Men characters through Twitter.

Another blog informed me of this powerful story of Fan Fiction and actual common sense prevailing in the digital world (I know it's a miracle). Deep Focus, the digital agency for AMC was praised for their ability to use Transmedia Planning (an early version of Propagation Planning first presented by Faris Yakob) to extend the narrative of the show into other media platforms. Deep Focus did not however have anything to do with this marketing action.

AMC used legal action to get Twitter to remove 9 of the Mad Men accounts including Don Draper and Peggy Olson. The DMCA, or the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, essentially protects the infringement of intellectual property or copyrights. The fans then created the website WeAreSterlingCooper.com which aggragated the latest Twitter content into one place. The website started with this statement:

Fan fiction. Brand hijacking. Copyright misuse. Sheer devotion. Call it what you will, but we call it the blurred line between content creators and content consumers, and it's not going away. We're your biggest fans, your die-hard proponents, and when your show gets cancelled we'll be among the first to pass around the petition. Talk to us. Befriend us. Engage us. But please, don't treat us like criminals.

This site exists to catalogue the conversation around AMC's Mad Men and its fanbase across the social web. But it's just the beginning. 'We are Sterling Cooper' is a rallying cry to brands and fans alike to come together and create together.

After the initial backlash against the DMCA notices, the accounts were reinstated by Twitter. Reports vary, but Silicon Alley Insider reported that Deep Focus told them they gently nudged AMC to rescind the DMCA notices. It's easy to believe that they were savvy enough to recognize that they were essentially shutting down free advertising and in turn creating a good deal of bad PR.

ShoutEm: Could be used for fan building and consumer research?

ShoutEm Demo from vikot on Vimeo.

Twitter for Business

Ogilvy PR 360 DI Twitter Webinar

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Radiohead: Giving the Consumer Control

1 Song, 12 cameras. Radiohead released this song with Prosumers in mind and with some forward thinking they were able to capture enough video assets to let their fans edit their own music video over and over again. This is a brilliant example of Propagation Planning by providing a stimulus that was engaging enough for Prosumers to play with.

http://www.wowow.co.jp/music/radiohead/special/

The average person on Twitter has 80 friends

HP Labs just conducted some major research on Twitter to understand social networks that matter. They produced a heavy academic paper that you can find here if you want to read it.

Right now the Twitter universe is around 5 million people, which is still small to Facebook, which is around 60 million. On average, most Twitter users have 80 friends and tweet once a day. The average user has only been on Twitter for 7 months.

I think the 80 friends part is most interesting. If somebody says something positive about your brand on Twitter that person has given it a powerful endorsement to a decent audience. If you say something horrible about your brand they have warned others away from it. 22squared conducted some recent research which indicated that 61% of consumers say that during rough economic times, personal recommendations from friends are more important than normal.

Could Twitter and Social Networks be even more important during rough economic times with the average user having 80 friends? I think so.