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 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
By Maura Curtin
Contact: Damien Ragsdale
Weber Shandwick
(212) 445-8315
dragsdale@webershandwick.com
SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING CONSORTIUM™ ENCOURAGES THE INDUSTRY “TO TALK SMAC” WITH LAUNCH OF NEW SOCIAL MEDIA WIKI
B. Bonin Bough, PepsiCo’s Global Director of Digital and Social Media, Appointed to the SMAC Board
December 2, 2009 – New York, NY: The Social Media Advertising Consortium™ (SMAC), a non-profit trade council organized to create standards and measurement for social media, today announced the launch of its new SMAC Wiki at http://wiki.smac.org/. The goal of the new site is to compile a standard vocabulary to define the environment, users, actions, products and results in the social media industry.
“In 2009, social network advertising revenues will hit an estimated $1.825 billion.* Yet the industry is still fuzzy when it comes to details,” said Maura Curtin, Executive Director of The Social Media Advertising Consortium™ (SMAC). “The lack of a universal language around social media makes the ever changing landscape of social media even more confusing. By working to compile, distill, define and source a list of terms, SMAC has put a stake in the social media landscape to help our rapidly evolving industry address this challenge.”
The SMAC members represent a variety of social media companies, allowing for a holistic view on not just the terms that should be standardized, but also their definitions. To that end, the SMAC Wiki allows for continuous updating and revisions to reflect the ever changing landscape of social media.
SMAC invites all users to be part of the process and learn to use these terms properly, share them with colleagues, and provide feedback. The SMAC Standards Board reviews all submissions and publishes approved terms with proper credit. As the social media industry grows, SMAC will continually review and add those terms that reach a critical mass of usage.
The SMAC Wiki was developed by the following team members:
TEAM LEADER
Libby Pigg VP Media Strategy, Edelman Digital
WORKING GROUP
- Mike Barbeau VP, Social Vibe
- Stuart Bogaty SMAC Board Member
- Jon Rygh
- Shiv Singh VP, Social Media & Global Strategic Initiatives, Razorfish
- John Schneider VP of Sales, Federated Media
- David Woodrow SVP Sales & Partner Services, Gather
B. Bonin Bough of PepsiCo Appointed New SMAC Board Member
The Social Media Advertising Consortium is also proud to announce the appointment of B. Bonin Bough, Global Director of Digital and Social Media, PepsiCo, to the SMAC leadership board. Mr. Bough. Formerly the Executive Vice President of Digital and Social Media at Weber Shandwick and a professor at NYU’s Center for Publishing Graduate Studies, Bough has helped the PepsiCo brand parlay itself as a traditional advertising icon into the realm of digital social brand interaction.
Tapping into his proven track record of online community building, social media, social video, and digital marketing, Bough has been instrumental in integrating social media and the “online conversation” into PepsiCo’s overall brand vision, engaging online consumers, and tracking behavior and trends that the brand can leverage successfully. Bough looks to bring his expertise to the SMAC leadership board and help the council continually set new standards for measurement in social media.
“I’m excited to be on board with the thought leaders that comprise the membership of the Social Media Advertising Consortium,” said Bough. “As social media keeps growing and evolving, we need a forward-thinking industry organization that represents our interests and really looks at the ecosystem of social media -paid, earned and integrated. For me that organization is SMAC.”
*Source: Nielsen, April 2009
By Maura Curtin
Building Your Brand Audience
DECEMBER 10, 2009 • 2:30-4:30PM Eastern
The Advertising Research Foundation
432 Park Ave South New York, NY 10016
Social Media is free marketing research—people are talking about brands without companies having to pay them to find out what they like or dislike. How can the power of social media be harnessed to better serve the brand? How can online conversations be curated to better shape the brand narrative? Using social media effectively takes more than just writing a blog, creating a widget, setting up a Facebook fan page, or starting a Twitter account. Social media is a strategy that fits into the overall marketing plan and touches every aspect of it. This new era of marketing is about building customer engagement through meaningful dialogue, creating offline and online synergy, to create co-authored brand stories. Learn how building brand audiences and creating brand experiences can transform both advertising and marketing.
Speakers:
Growing Your Graph: How do you Know You’ve Made the Connection
Taddy Hall – Chief Operating Officer, Meteor Solutions
The Connected Consumer: How Consumers Engage with Brands in the Digital World
Andrea Harrison – Strategy Director, Razorfish
“No I don’t want to be Facebook friends with my Butter”: Re-setting the Agenda for Social Media
Nathaniel Pérez – Head of Community Intelligence, Sapient Interactive
For more info and to register in-person or virtually visit: http://thearf.org/assets/social-media-council