News
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
By Maura Curtin
Tickets are limited, register now- mashableholidaynyc.eventbrite.com
Come join the Mashable crew including Adam Ostrow (Editor-in-Chief), Sharon Feder (Managing Editor), Adam Hirsch (COO), Tamar Weinberg (Community Manager), Matt Silverman (Associate Features Editor), Brenna Ehrlich (Editorial Assistant) and Brett Petersel (East Coast Direct)… in addition to the New York tech and social media community for an intimate 150 person all-you-can-drink networking event at the Roger Smith Hotel (@rshotel). Limited tickets are now on sale through Eventbrite. This year, we are donating a portion of our proceeds to the Association to Benefit Children (ABC). So come enjoy a great collection of wine (thanks to Wine 2.0), Singha Beer, Red Eye Bloody Marys and some appetizers from the Roger Smith Hotel.
http://mashableholidaynyc.eventbrite.com/
By Maura Curtin
A crackerjack team of SMAC members have joined together to create a new group within SMAC dedicated to elevating and promoting social media advertising “best practices” throughout the industry. Best practices are advertiser case studies that serve as industry examples of effective social media advertising, innovative strategies and responsible tactics across several industry categories. This program will feature the great work being done by our members, provide more awareness of SMAC and generate goodwill for members and clients that are featured. The best practices team will review the submitted case studies monthly and select the best 3-5 cases that will be highlighted as recent “Industry Best Practices from SMAC.org” on SMAC.org and in partnership with several industry publications to create awareness. We intend to publish best practices monthly to provide members a consistent opportunity to highlight their best work and to provide a reliable resource of “new and noteworthy examples” to the industry.
Currently, the members of the Best Practices Committee are:
Sean Muzzy, Neo@Ogilvy
Rebecca Watson, Real Girls Media
Liza Hauzman, Gigya
Jason Wellcome, Weber Shandwick
Eric Wheeler, 33Across
The Best Practices categories are:
- Brand Awareness/ Engagement
- Customer Loyalty/ Listening
- Customer Acquisition/ Trial
- Word of Mouth/ Buzz/ Sharing
- Advocacy/ Non-profit
- Business to Business
- New Product Launch
- Event Promotion
- Social Search
- Research
Below are the Best Practice case studies we’ll be highlighting over the next 3 months:
December 10th – Customer Acquisition
January 10th – Brand Awareness/Engagement
February 10th – Word of Mouth/Buzz
Hurry – The deadline for Customer Acquisition best practice case study submissions for announcement around December 10th is Wednesday, December 2nd! If you are interested in participating in this group or in submitting a best practices case study to be be highlighted, please complete this form:
http://drop.io/smacorg/asset/smac-best-practice-case-study-submission-form-ppt
You can also contact us by emailing research at smac.org.
By Maura Curtin
Shelby Bonnie recently suggested “Let’s Kill the CPM” http://bit.ly/UiDBO
Many commented, including Ben Young, an author from New Zealand who has a self-proclaimed passion for “marketing, ideas and entrepreneurship”
He asked the following questions:
A swap to CPA, Cost Per Action provides a better baseline for improvement. In my experience this is heeded by:
1) Lack of definition around actions
2) Actual implementation of measuring actions
3) Benchmarks. Small business doesn’t know this stuff or has the capability to measure it. Large enterprise is a different story.
Here at SMAC, we are hard at work answering the questions Ben is asking and addressing Shelby’s premise that the CPM is already dead as a useful metric, specifically inside the social media space. Industry leaders from brands, agencies and research companies like Nielsen and Comscore have joined our efforts to identify and create measurement metrics that will impact the industry and make a difference in what is being bought, sold and measured.
In the current model, media planners cannot fit what needs to be measured into a spreadsheet based on reach and frequency. Operating inside this structure is frustrating for the media buyer and seller. And to Ben’s point, small businesses have no insights into how to harness the power of social media….coming soon.
By Larry Weber, Guest Blogger
One major issue holding back social media marketing is a common language and methodology for measurement. Traditional advertising measures such as CPM (cost per thousand impressions) don’t cut it for measuring social media.
Social media is all about engagement, which goes well beyond the initial impressions produced by TV or print advertising or online banner ads. Social media is about how a consumer interacts on a deeper level with an offer or an opinion, for example.
The good news is that the web provides a ton of data for the marketer to analyze. You can look at how long a consumer stays on a site, which pages she looks at, which widgets she downloads, which contests she participates in, which coupon she uses, etc., etc. The tough part is that the data can be overwhelming. Truly useful tools and methodologies for measurement are nascent but improving all the time.
Within the next year I predict that the marketing industry will agree upon a common language and standard metrics for social media – be it cost per engagement or something different.
And it’s not just about cost. It’s about value. It’s about social media ROI as a part of overall marketing ROI.
It might sound like finding the Holy Grail for marketing… but this time I believe it’s different because of the web. What do you think? Email Larry at lweber at w2groupinc dot com.
Larry Weber is chairman of Digital Influence Group, a digital marketing agency that helps companies leverage the power of social media to generate business results. He is also a board member of SMAC. Full bio here.
By Maura Curtin
Industry executives gathered at the Cue Art Foundation on West 25th street in NYC last week to celebrate advertising week at a cocktail party hosted by SMAC and sponsored by Brickfish, PepsiCo and Meebo. The event attracted luminaries like John Montgomery of Group M, Liza Hausman of Gigya, Dave Shulman of Enfatico, Libby Pigg of Edelman Digital, Eric Wheeler of 33across, Bonin Bough of PepsiCo, Nichole Goodyear of Brickfish and Carter Brokaw and Seth Sternberg of Meebo among many others. SMAC plans to roll-out similar events in different cities in the coming months. More…
By Maura Curtin
Coca-Cola, Verizon, Livestrong and More Reveal How Social Media Marketing Has Changed Everything
Join SMAC at digiday:SOCIAL on 9/17!
The top brands will share their secrets and help you discover what the future holds for your social media marketing strategies at digiday:SOCIAL (www.digidaysocial.com) on September 17th, 2009 in New York City. During this high-level event, top Publishers, Agency Executives and Brand Marketers will come together and discuss if Social Media Marketing is all hype or the biggest revolution we’ll see in our lifetime. DIGIDAY gives media leaders a chance to converge and discuss high level strategies and the future of Social Media Marketing and uncover how it will play out for all.Register Today for digiday:SOCIAL https://registration.dm2events.com/event/DigidaySocial
The SAMMY Award’s will happen post digiday:SOCIAL!
The SAMMY Awards honors overall excellence and breakthrough achievement in Social Advertising, Media, and Marketing. The SAMMY’s are presented by DM2, the publishers of digiday:DAILY and the hosts of digiday:SOCIAL (www.digidaysocial.com), the organization includes hundreds of leading social media and marketing experts, journalists, insiders, marketers, publishers, and social technology visionaries. The purpose of the SAMMY Awards is to recognize the outstanding efforts being made in the area of social media and advertising. The SAMMY Awards mission is to honor the groundbreaking work in multiple Social categories.
Information about the SAMMY Awards is available here.
By Maura Curtin
Last night I had to go if I wanted to observe the Brandhackers SMAC (Social Media Ad Council) “Pitch Pepsi” Meetup Happy Hour. It was at Dewey’s that I discovered Tyler Hoffman (CFO of Gather)’s favorite Muppets are the old hecklers in the balcony.
Read the full article
By Maura Curtin
Join us at Dewey’s Flatiron in New York City on July 13th for a panel discussion moderated by Tom Gerace. Part of the Brandhackers Happy Hour Speaker Series. Sign up or find out more about the event here.
