The use of social networking sites such as Facebook has grown dramatically over the last three years. Nielsen reports that the average Facebook user spends 14 minutes a day on the site, dwarfing others like Google and Amazon. Facebook has essentially become its own Internet, where people communicate, watch videos, share photos and play games. Most interestingly, all of the members have rich personas attached to the site. They visit as themselves, not as a credit card number or esoteric username. The combination of rich personal details and frequent activity has the potential to create exciting new opportunities, but businesses are still in the early days of figuring out how to leverage Facebook and similar social channels.
Marketers are still struggling to create highly personalized experiences that serve the specific needs and behaviours of each individual visitor to a traditional style website. This vision is still difficult to achieve, in large part because websites still do not have direct access to the needs and off-site behaviours of the visitor. Web analytics and visitor pro-filing have enabled a limited level of personalization, but the available data for each visitor is often limited to the demographics associated with an IP address or search terms. This does not distinguish an actual visitor; it only knows coarse statistical data related to that visitor.

With 1.6 million users spending a considerable portion of their online time onsite, Facebook and other social networks would appear to be a marketer’s dream. The sites themselves attract millions of views per day and each viewer, being a member of the site, has a higher degree of personal data associated with him or her than a typical visitor to Google or other vendor sites. Facebook exploits this information by letting advertisers choose targets based on gender, political views and education level.

Despite this level of personalization, many advertisers are less than satisfied with the results of these campaigns. There might be several reasons for this, but one should examine the intentions of the average Facebook visitor. When people visit Facebook, they do so to interact with friends, see what is new and consume content that was created or curated by their network. In short, they are socializing, not consuming in the traditional sense.
So, advertising on the social networks themselves can be of limited value. However, that does not mean that social networking sites are of limited value to advertisers and retailers. One of the most important characteristics of social networks is that they serve as a centralized identity management service for their users. For example, because of its role as a social enabler, Facebook profile information is generally accurate. Our accounts on Facebook contain a wealth of data about us, whereas an online merchant’s account contains only a credit card number, address and buying history. Social networks have leveraged this information for years, but recently, networks like Facebook have started to make that data available to other sites if the member allows. This is a major change, as members now have the ability to transfer their personal data to a site where they are in fact behaving as customers.

In December 2008, Facebook released Facebook Connect, a mechanism that websites can use to allow visitors to login using their Facebook credentials. For Facebook, this development is a win because it extends its influence beyond facebook.com. For users, it can be seen as a way to eliminate the hassle of inputting the same information time and again. For retailers and brand sites, this represents a significant opportunity to harvest detailed customer data. Because Facebook shares a user’s entire profile with any site that the user has chosen to connect with, the available data is very rich, ranging from personal attributes to hobbies to the visitor’s entire network of friends and acquaintances. To put this into perspective, consider the “detailed” visitor data typically available from website analytics tools. This data provides the visitor’s Internet service provider, the city and several properties of the Internet browser. Using information such as location, the website can often derive attributes such as average income or degree of sophistication, but these attributes are very approximate. Buying behaviour, navigation and inbound search terms all help to further define the user, but the majority of the data is contextual rather than personal. Based on this information, the site knows where the visitor is coming from, but not who he or she is.

Compare this to what Facebook knows about many of its members: age, gender, marital status, hobbies and more. The entire range of data also includes the visitor’s list of friends (and many of their attributes), all of their photos and videos. This tells us much more about the visitor, through both explicit and implicit information. This degree of information, combined with inbound search terms and previous site history, gives us a much better view of the visitor’s intentions.
These changes show that social networks are becoming storehouses of rich personal data. However, there is another important phenomenon to consider: the fact that social networks are becoming storehouses of rich personal media. Currently, millions of photos are shared on Facebook every day, making it a larger photosharing site than most dedicated sites, such as Flickr. Increasingly, users also upload video and other forms of media.
A person is defined, in part, by who he knows and associates with. Marketers must take that into account—something they can do by using the data available from a visitor’s social network profile. In addition to personal attributes, the profile contains a list of friends and a list of groups that each person belongs to. These represent social links that can be used to learn more about the visitor and to serve him better.

A first-order connection is between friends. Once a website has access to a visitor’s social-networking profile, it gains information about a visitor’s friends. That information can be used to make inferences about the visitor. For example, a first-time visitor might be a complete mystery to the site in terms of buying habits, but the site can use the buying patterns of the visitor’s friends to begin inferring behaviour. A “friend” can represent a highly valued or trusted connection. This relationship can be exploited to show trusted reviews and ratings to the visitor, thereby relying on relationships to increase interest and awareness of a given product.

A second-order connection is between the visitor and his groups. In some cases, the title of the group may be enough to understand the social affinities of the visitor. In other cases, the site may need to collect information about each visitor, relate that information to the visitor’s groups, and begin to profile the group over time.

Each of these classes of connections represents an approach to learning more about the user. In addition to analysis and profiling, these connections can be used to create more valuable experiences for the user. The exact form of these experiences will be highly dependent on the site.
These connections represent conduits through which people communicate, share status and influence each other’s behavior. Influence is perhaps the most interesting aspect for marketers, and is worth examining separately.

Traditional forms of online marketing focus on the ability for a banner ad or other online advertising to draw the user to the site. In other words, this approach relies on the influence exerted by various mechanisms rather than people. This is largely due to the fact that click-throughs are easy to capture, measure and analyze in a way that casual conversations are not. That began to change with the advent of Web 2.0. New forms of social media gave rise to a number of methods for measuring the influence of “buzz.” Marketers were now in a position to try to understand and direct the influence of the crowd, but person-to-person influence was difficult to capture.

The development and growth of social networks then opened up new possibilities for marketers. These networks give users an easy way to share product reviews and other media with their friends in a more casual way than via e-mail or other communication channels. They also provide a mechanism for viral effects, as information shared with one group of friends could spread when they share it with their friends. Analyzing the spread of these shared messages could provide a better understanding of the likelihood of a product inspiring a person to share it with friends, the reach of that share, the rate of conversion from share to visit, and finally the rate of conversion from visit to buy.

On a product level, this type of analysis can help marketers understand how new products and marketing messages are spread through the digital space. For example, How quickly does the message or product information spread to a population of people, How many people have seen or shared the message, How diverse is the group of people that has seen the message?
On a personal level, such information allows marketers to understand the influence of individuals or groups. By looking at the way individuals respond to information, marketers can develop campaigns that target individuals and also ultimately aim to increase the buying behaviours of a larger population. By looking at influence trends through a given group, the marketers can learn how to cater to self-identified clusters of customers.
Visitors entering a site using their social networking credentials share a great deal about themselves, their network and their ability to influence that network. Each of these aspects, when used separately or in combination, provide marketers with new options for both engaging and understanding their customers.

It is however critical to understand that users of Facebook personal data should only use it in compliance with all applicable laws ensuring that all required permissions are requested.

By Philip Macartney – Social Media Lead at eightytwenty/interactive™

No longer does anyone call their television the “Idiot Box”.  The “boob tube” is a thing of the past.  Now people own 42 inch plasmas with high definition that are internet ready.  They time shift, record and pause shows with the touch of a button.  How can it be an “idiot box” if it does all that?

And more recently, TVs have been getting really smart.  Broadcasters are beginning to understand that there is value in being interactive and that means TVs are becoming social.

The emergence of social TV has been largely led by brands.  Brands have a history of using cutting edge communication technology, so when we partnered with Meteor to produce the interactive Apprentice Unseen platform it came as no surprise that the audience jumped at the chance to get involved with the programme.  Twenty percent of TV3’s viewers joined the interactive experience.

Bank of Ireland recognised the power of this new phenomenon and decided to leverage its sponsorship of RTE’s Dragons’ Den by making it interactive as well.  But they didn’t stop there – they saw the possibility of creating a new small business portal and www.allaboutbusiness.ie was born.  It’s now home to all their small business sponsorships.

Not to be outdone, broadcasters now have their own plans.  And as they own the content they should have an advantage.  But they’ll have to compete against a number of newcomers who have also spotted the opportunity.  One of those is Google TV which launches this autumn.  You can read all you want about who is going to win the battle, but when the dust has settled one thing for sure is that no one will be calling that screen in the corner of the living room the “idiot box”.

by Philippe Brodeur – Chief Operations Officer and Branded Entertainment Lead at eightytwenty/interactive™

We have to start thinking less about staff, footfall and roadshows and start to look again at what experiential marketing and the brand experience is really about.

Driven by emerging and social technologies, the world of shopping is undergoing a transformation in its essence. We are witnessing consumer behavioural shifts. Every brand interaction is being challenged to be more personal, engaging and meaningful.  Consumers expect to interact with products in such a manner as to reveal their behaviour, features and advantages; What is left behind in the consumer’s mind and heart is the experience.

And keeping the same cause in mind, we can see how consumers’ interests are moving towards more meaningful areas. Today the traditional status symbols are no longer every consumer’s dream, but they are being replaced by connectivity, skilfulness & generosity. This is why brands need to start looking at a new breed of privileges to satisfy consumers’ ever growing desire for this new form of status. Instant gratification is being satisfied by a host of novel, offline and online real-time products, services and experiences.

At this time, mobile technologies and product identification technologies are enabling users to interact with and purchase virtually any brand they come across in the world. The potential for a sale exists anywhere. Brands have to take the lead in developing strategies for a digital world, where their stories are creating tailored experiences that deliver augmented interactions for the consumer.

In this context, serving should be the new selling. Brands need to shift their marketing efforts from “broadcasting” to “assisting”. Keeping the connectivity technologies as close as possible, brands should start using them to “butler” their customers in order to deliver engagement and loyalty.

Creating a compelling brand experience at every consumer touchpoint is a significant challenge. At eightytwenty/interactive™ we look at every client from the perspective of a multichannel brand experience. For each case we develop commerce models built around this thinking.

Our thinking nurtures experiential marketing because we believe the brand’s story needs to be told in an appealing and engaging form to the right audiences in the right context. It is important to provide the same engaging and rewarding experience at every touchpoint.

We know the future will be about engagement through experience. This is why we use experiential marketing knowledge to create stable relevant platforms for brands to engage with their audiences. And this is why we also choose emerging technologies to develop and sustain these platforms that create multichannel brand experiences to appeal to consumers rational and emotional buying triggers.

by David O’Leary – Managing Partner and Experiential Lead at eightytwenty/interactive™

Having recently taken the eightytwenty/interactive brand and given it a fantastic new identity, our art director Kam was asked by IMJ to write a piece about how she tackled such an important rebrand. Her article is published in this months IMJ, and you can download the PDF from the link below.

You can download it here too!

We’re proud to announce that the new website for Petits Filous is now Live.

The site contains tips on getting more Calcium and Vitamin D into your child’s diet, ideas for playtime for all ages, and theres even a section to download and print out pictures for colouring-in!

Check it out here and let us know your feedback

We’re proud to announce our new identity – Take a moment to read up on what we do now and give us any feedback you might have…looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

“Incorporating digital agency Eighty:Twenty, experiential agency Pareto 3D and Digital Content provider Sector7 Branded Entertainment, eightytwenty/interactive helps companies build better brands by delivering business results through customer experiences eightytwenty/interactive combines the best thought leadership of the consulting world with the leading capabilities of the marketing services industry to support our clients’ business needs, such as integrating TV with digital platforms, creating a multi-channel customer experience or participating in the social world with a demonstrated commitment to innovation, eightytwenty/interactive continues to cultivate expertise in Social Influence Marketing, Mobile, Experiential & Emerging Media, Creative Design, Analytics, Data, Technology, User Experience and Licensing”

Thinking of popping into the Digital Media & Marketing Summit tomorrow? Then why not drop in to see us and get a sneak peak of our new business offering.

eightytwenty/interactive creates experiences that build businesses. Incorporating experiential agency Pareto 3D, Digital Content provider Sector7 Branded Entertainment and Digital Agency Eighty:Twenty, we help our clients build better brands by delivering business results through customer experiences.

eightytwenty/interactive combines the best thought leadership of the consulting world with the leading capabilities of the marketing services industry to support our clients’ business needs, such as integrating TV with digital platforms, creating a multi-channel experience or participating in the social world.

With a demonstrated commitment to innovation, eightytwenty/interactive continues to cultivate our expertise in Social Influence Marketing, Experiential & Emerging Media, Creative Design, Analytics, Data, Technology, User Experience and Licensing.

Our recent projects include The Apprentice Unseen, Allaboutbusiness.ie for Bank Of Ireland’s support of Dragon’s Den, a digital magazine for Munster Rugby and cool new Facebook app for Nokia called Apps for Ireland.

The inaugural National Digital Media & Marketing Summit takes place in the RDS concert hall this Wednesday, 31st of March and Eighty:Twenty will be exhibiting at the event as one of the sponsors.

We will be holding a competition to win €10,000 worth of audit, training and consultancy for the winning company to reach and engage their consumers in the digital age. Just visit our stand for details.

Speakers at the all-day event include Ronan Harris of Google Ireland, CNN Digital Brand Manager John Healy and Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Eamon Ryan T.D.

We will also be on hand to answer any questions delegates have during their networking breaks.

So make sure to drop by and say hello!

Stumbled across this little doozy of an example of how social media can go very wrong, very quickly, when placed in the wrong hands – I’m predicting this story will be be all over the “interweb” in about…5mins!

Here’s the link to the Nestle Status update, where the moderator is presumably having a very bad day and taking it out on the page users.

We’re pleased to announce that our latest collaboration with Nokia is now LIVE! Apps for Ireland can be found on Facebook and it allows anybody to submit their ideas for what Apps they’d like to see developed, and they can also vote for other ideas to win loads of great prizes ranging from meals in Supermacs to Nokia Phones, and some lucky winners will win grand prizes up to a value of €3,000…

Check out the App on the Nokia Ireland Facebook page here

Have fun!