News
By Maura Curtin
Pandora & Intel Join Growing Support to Establish Industry-Wide Standards
New York, NY – May 5, 2010 – The Social Media Advertising Consortium (SMAC), an industry association that aims to set standards for buying and measuring marketing in social media, today announced 11 newly-elected board members.
The Board includes social media industry leaders representing brands, agencies and social media publishers. The Board of Directors includes a cross-section of the social media industry, with representation from social media properties as well as digital and advertising agencies.
Current board members are Bonin Bough, Global Director of Digital & Social Media at PepsiCo; Stuart Bogaty, Vice President of Marketing at True Action; Heidi Browning, Chief Digital Officer at Universal McCann and Tom Gerace, CEO at Gather. New board members are:
– Stephanie Agresta, Executive Vice President, Global Director of Digital Strategy and Social Media, Porter Novelli
– Carter Brokaw, Chief Revenue Officer, Meebo
– Gina Garrubbo, Executive Vice President, BlogHer
– Nichole Goodyear, CEO & Co-Founder, Brickfish
– Joe Marchese, President, Socialvibe
– Andy Markowitz, Director, Global Digital Strategy Group, GE
– Scott Monty, Global Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager, Ford
– Leslie Reiser, Director WW Digital Marketing, IBM
– Bryan Rhoades, Director of Social & Emerging Media, Intel Corporation
– Ian Schafer, CEO & Founder, Deep Focus
– Shiv Singh, Vice President, Global Social Media Lead, Razorfish
Larry Weber, CEO of W2 Group and Eric Wheeler, CEO of 33Across are moving into Board Emeritus roles. Michael Barron, Esq., DLA Piper US LLP has been elected secretary of the board.
The consortium has seen continued participation from top players in the social media space since it began in September 2008, with a growing demand for the exclusive research and insight it offers its members. Agencies, brands and social networks have witnessed equal value, with participating members now including: AdNectar, Buddy Media, Coca-Cola, ComScore, Context Optional, Converseon, FD Kinesis, Gigya, Health Central, The Huffington Post, IAC, Meredith Interactive/Real Girls Media, NeoOgilvy, Pandora, PopSugar, Room214, Visible Technologies, Weber Shandwick and WeeWorld.
SMAC has also been officially incorporated as a 501(c)6 non-profit organization with the goal of providing industry-wide standards.
“SMAC had an outstanding first year. We brought together early thought leaders, hired an executive director and team, and laid a solid foundation for accelerating industry growth. This month, we are thrilled to announce that leading brands and agencies have joined SMAC, and that thought leaders from within each will be joining our expanded board of Directors,” said Tom Gerace, CEO of Gather and Chairman of SMAC.
Companies interested in SMAC membership can contact Maura Curtin at mcurtin@smac.org. A complete list of charter members is available at http://www.smac.org.
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About the Social Media Ad Consortium (SMAC)
The Social Media Ad Consortium is a non-profit association, which represents agencies, social networks and brands in an effort to move the industry forward through standards, research and measurement. It is dedicated to responsible scale, innovation and evolution of social media marketing. SMAC is at the forefront of the industry, evolving with it to define today’s success and tomorrow’s innovation.
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By Maura Curtin
Join SMAC for a lively discussion on how brands are organized around social media. A panel of top brands and agencies will share insights, look at best practices, campaign successes and discuss what’s next in measurement and research. Discussion followed by networking, wine & light hors d’oeuvres.
Panel is filling out now and will include:
- Bonin Bough, Global Director of Social Media, PepsiCo
- Len Devanna, Director of Web Strategy, EMC Corporation
- Pauline Ores, Market Insights, Principal Consultant – Social Insights Practice, IBM
- Shiv Singh, VP & Social Media Lead, Razorfish Inc.
This event is made possible by the generous support of Brickfish- www.brickfish.com
When: Wed., April 7th 6-8pm pm at Razorfish 440 Broadway, 19th Floor, New York, NY 10018
To register please go to: http://smac.eventbrite.com
By Maura Curtin
We’re excited to share two new BlogHer case studies with SMAC followers.
BlogHer just released the fourth annual Social Media study, providing a definitive view of how women are using blogs, social networks and technology in 2011. Read more here.
Beauty is in the Eye of the Blog Holder: What Influences Women to Purchase Beauty Products? Read more here.
By Samantha Wishman
At the Digiday:Social conference at the W Union Square on Tuesday, Wieden+Kennedy talked about their hugely successful Old Spice man campaign.
First, they carefully crafted the man behind the bath product. Isaiah Mustafa is a manly man with a striking (and apparently digitally enhanced) six-pack. And yet, he also has a soft side and is old-fashioned at heart. He’s a man who smells sexy with Old Spice and builds a gourmet kitchen for his one and only woman. He appeals both to men and to the women who encourage their hygiene habits. What a winning spokesman: a buff athlete who’s devoted and monogamous.
Then the Old Spice man, the perfect man, went viral. He reached influencers, they liked him and his funny YouTube videos, and then they told their friends about him. So many friends that the videos have 143 million total views. What was Wieden + Kennedy’s reach strategy? To not simply reach influencers, but rather to use influencers as a means to activate communities like Digg, Reddit, and 4chan. In this case, becoming a fan or “liking” Old Spice on Facebook was a second wave push.
Wieden + Kennedy’s goal was to go into all major online communities, even niche ones, and take over. Their advice is to learn the community vernacular, understand the content that works for each site, and then be willing to let go of control. Let people appropriate the brand.
As an example of how niche they went: Old Spice man posted a defense of libraries, which was picked up and retweeted by librarians across Twitter. “We listened to small people,” said Weiden+Kennedy digital strategist Josh Millrod. In addition to winning over the librarians of America, the two articles in the Huffington Post about the Old Spice man’s literary bent were an added media bonus.
The Old Spice man campaign was an example of brilliant creative combined with tactful use of the many forms of media now available to advertisers. When the Digiday:Social audience was asked who had seen the Old Spice man commercial during the Super Bowl, about one third of people said they had. Not so fast. The Old Spice commercial never aired during the Super Bowl. Weiden+Kennedy’s combined use of traditional and new media spots had created such a successful campaign that people credited it with a Super Bowl ad buy.
By Samantha Wishman
According to a July 2010 Nielsen study on media multi-tasking, 75% of Americans use the Internet and TV simultaneously. Tying together Internet and TV content has not only the potential to create an enhanced experience for viewers, but also new possibilities for brands to engage simultaneously on both media platforms.
Recently, Fox Networks tried to capitalize on this TV-Internet opportunity by creating a social media component to their “Teen Choice Awards.” Partnering with Planet Cazmo, a virtual world for tweens and teens, they created a virtual beach party in the hour leading up to the awards show.
Partygoers created cartoon avatars to watch cartoon versions of New Boyz, Jason Derulo, and Kevin Rudolf perform on a cartoon beach (SMAC’s belle-of-the-ball avatar was named PartyGirl and had a blue spiky mullet and purple eyebrows). Our PartyGirl jumped off a diving board into the ocean, played with a volleyball by herself because no one would play with her, and tried to make friends through her dialogue box but was sad when no one responded.
It wasn’t the most fun party we’ve ever been to, but there were certainly lessons to be learned from Fox’s virtual experiment.
Bob Bain, executive producer of Teen Choice 2010 stated before the event: “We are excited to be working with Planet Cazmo and to have a customized virtual world for our site visitors to form communities, talk about the show, and extend the online experience.” Their objective was to create a community-based user experience beyond the TV screen, but it’s not clear that the beach party succeeded in fulfilling its goal. For PartyGirl, at least, it fell short.
First of all, it was hard to communicate. There were 53 avatars at the beach party when PartyGirl got there, and yet that didn’t translate into much more than 53 Mario Cart-looking cartoons walking around. No one was reading the dialogue boxes that pop up over the head of your avatar, or if they were reading them, they weren’t responding. Unlike Twitter, where the integrated feed makes engagement possible, discrete bubbles on the same screen are scattered and don’t naturally lead conversation.
Second: the question of avatars. While this might be a good way for younger kids to communicate, it seemed young even for the show’s teen demographic (the cheesy graphic design didn’t help). The appeal of most social networking sites is in engaging with your real friends and real celebrities through an interactive medium, not in creating a cartoon alias.
In spite of the beach party’s shortcomings, there were certainly ideas to praise. For example, performers directed partygoers to the merchandise vendor to buy the songs they were hearing on iTunes and Amazon (the vendor was a purple cartoon microphone with spiky hair). Effectively driving sales through the combination of TV and Internet could be big business.
Our takeaway: If a virtual beach party could create a community around the award show, or for that matter any live TV event, social media would add value not only for viewers, but for brands as well.
By Maura Curtin
From Mashable.com: Mashable is proud to announce that we have joined the Social Media Advertising Consortium(SMAC), an organization that brings together various members of the social media community to collaborate, explore critical issues, and establish relevant standards in a fast-changing industry. Link to full article is here: http://mashable.com/2010/02/02/social-media-advertising-consortium/
By Maura Curtin
As part of New York’s Social Media Week, RFI Studios and SMAC are hosting a roundtable discussion “The Role of Social Media in Digital Storytelling” on Tuesday, Feb. 2nd from 6-8pm at Ruder Finn’s New York Headquarters.
Speakers are:
-Bonin Bough – Director of Digital and Social Media at PepsiCo
-Marisa F. Thalberg – Vice President, Global Digital Marketing – The Estée Lauder Companies, Inc.
-Michael Schubert – Ruder Finn – Chief Innovation Officer
-Sean Seibel – Microsoft – Senior User Experience Evangelist
-Caitlin Hill – Hitviews
-Mark Cardwell – UNDP
Click here to RSVP to this event: http://socialmedia.rfistudios.com/
By Maura Curtin
Thursday January 28, 2010, San Francisco, CA: ARF Industry Leader Forum – Putting Listening to Work
The Advertising Research Foundation’s Industry Leader Forum is an interactive event to help advertisers, agencies, media and research companies determine how to use social media and digital behavior for their listening strategies. Learn how to use listening, evaluate listening applications, develop a listening strategy, integrate it into your existing research program, create an action plan and apply insights garnered. Attendees will receive The ARF Foundations Series – Listening tool, an $895 value, featuring 25 case studies and 30+ company reviews how listening is used for consumer insight, customer service, new product development, reputation management, competitive benchmarking, and breaking into new applications like media planning, targeting and predictive modeling. Speakers include: Jeremiah Owyang, digital media strategy superstar and blogger and Partner, Customer Strategy, Altimeter Group, Toyota Motor Sales, Microsoft, Kraft Foods, Saatchi and Saatchi Wellness and LinkedIn.
SMAC members use promo code SMACILF to save $100 off registration:
ARF Members $595, Non-Members $895
http://thearf.org/assets/ilf
By Maura Curtin
We are pleased to announce a special rate for SMAC members at this half-day must attend industry summit featuring brands like Pepsico, HP, Intuit and Michelin discussing social media.
Event: Social Integration – Harmonizing Social Channels into the Marketing, Communications, & Service Platform – Case Studies & Roundtables
Date: Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Location: The Graduate Center of The City University of NY 365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th Street), New York, New York 10016
Link to register: http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Summary.aspx?e=91e4f563-461d-4dcc-a7cf-9141543bcee9
Use promotional code SMAC for a special rate of $155.
By Maura Curtin
We are proud to announce that SMAC is an Affiliate Partner for AlwaysOn’s OnMedia 2010. OnMedia NYC is taking place at the Mandarin Oriental in NYC Feb 1-3rd 2010. This conference is where cutting-edge technology CEOs from Silicon Valley meet the global advertising and media establishment. This two-and-a-half-day event features CEO presentations and high-level debates on which forces are disrupting user behavior and creating new opportunities in the marketing, branding, advertising, and public relations industries.
AlwaysOn is offering SMAC members a 50% discount to OnMedia!
Click here to buy your ticket at the discounted rate
Click here to view the current program
Click here to view a complete event overview
