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Super Bowl Ads Boost Fans/Followers on Facebook & Twitter

Interesting research from ClickZ today demonstrating how marketers who advertised on the Super Bowl saw an increase in fans/followers of Facebook & Twitter.  See below for details:

 
Big questions I have about this are: what were expectations of these marketers with regards to FB and Twitter (and other social media properties)?  Did they hope to see a boost or was this just gravy on top of a big spending buy on the Super Bowl?  What is the value of the extra fans/followers to these marketers?  Will they track repeat usage, visits, times spent, sales, loyalty?  I'll be certain to track progress of these marketers on the social media front.

Interview with CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, in NYT

Great interview in the Times today with Tony Hsieh.  His company, Zappos, was acquired last year by Amazon for around $1 Billion.  Not bad for a little shoe company.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/10corner.html

He talks about starting LinkExchange right out of college and the culture/work environment of a young, fast-growing internet company.  Unfortunately over time the culture changed and he dreaded going to work.  So...after 2 years he and his partners sold the company to Microsoft for $265 Million. 

Tony says when he went to Zappos he wanted to make sure the employees never lost that sense of excitement and fun and that creating the right culture was/is key to Zappos' success.  They formalized the definition of that culture and even created 10 core values that represent it.

To back this up, one of the interview questions the HR team will ask a prospective employee is: "On a scale of 1 to 10 how weird are you?"  Unless you've interviewed at Zappos I bet you've never heard that one before. 

Personally and professionally I love this approach.  It's easy to ask/answer the standard interview questions but asking the one above says a lot about the company, its culture, and the people who work there. 

 

Goodbye 2009 from Jib Jab

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We Do Like Monday...Cyber Monday

Attention Kmart shoppers...or any shoppers...you spent a lot of cash yesterday.  Yes, the online shopping "holiday" known as Cyber Monday has come and gone and the numbers looked very good.  Coremetrics reports the following:

- Sales were up 24.1% vs. Black Friday 2009 (the day after Thanksgiving)

- Sales were up 13.7% vs. Cyber Monday 2008

- Consumers spent $180 per online order vs. $170 on Black Friday 2009

- Consumers spent $180 per online order vs. $130 on Cyber Monday 2008

- Apparel retailers showed boost of 26.4% in average dollar amount per order vs. Cyber Monday 2008

- Department stores saw 33% increase in new consumer traffic vs. Cyber Monday 2008 but...a 10% drop in average order value (might need to optimize those landing pages better or try re-targeting)

- Peak shopping hour was from 9-10am PST (wonder if businesses saw a drop in productivity during that time)

 Personally I spent about $400 online yesterday on Amazon and Dell and got some pretty sweet deals.  I guess Mondays aren't so bad after all.

 

 

American Airlines Email Marketing Needs Some Help

With all the information companies have about consumers on the web I'm always surprised when I receive emails from marketers that are off-target.  One recent example is American Airlines.  I've been flying American for over 20 years, I have hundreds of thousands of miles in my Advantage account, I do all my booking online, the company knows who I am, where I live, where I travel, etc.  I even opt-in to receive emails with Net SAAver Fares.  Only problem is AA rarely rarely sends me emails that are targeted based on all this knowledge.  Here's an email I just received this morning:

The email catches my attention with the headline about weekend getaway deals for next weekend and even highlight in red the fact that the deals are from "the New York City area" which is where I fly out of and then they list a whopping 2 places I can fly.  My first thought is "Really?  There are only 2 good deals on AA flights out of JFK, LGA or EWR next weekend?"  I'm a bit surprised by this.  

Then the bulk of the message lists 8 "great fares" on flights to/from destinations that are 100% not relevant to me.  This I don't understand at all.  First off...why bother listing these fares?  Secondly...why not provide me with more information about flights leaving the NYC area.  Even if the deals aren't so great at least the message would be targeted, relevant, and might make we want to call my wife and consider a quick trip out of town.  

With all the information AA has about me (and likely you, too) there's gotta be a better way.

Should Marketers Use Celebrity Endorsements?

This topic comes up at home every time a celebrity does something incredibly stupid (shoots someone, falls down drunk, crashes a car, gets involved with dog fighting, etc.).  Reporters then question marketers on their decision to use said celebrity as endorser of their product/service/business.  Will they continue to support the celebrity?  Will they drop him/her?  Will they look for someone new?  Will there be fallout for the marketer in way of decreased sales?  These are all things that marketers must thing about BEFORE signing up a well-known celebrity 'cause ya just never know what they might do in the real world.

That's why I was intrigued by some stats on this very topic that came out earlier in the week.  Turns out business leaders rank higher than athletes, tv/movie stars, singers or former political figures in being "most persuasive."  See below:

 
This bit of research begs the question "does persuasiveness translate to sales."  Regardless it's just another thing marketers should think about when determining who the best person is to endorse their company.

Being Social - 6 Brands Doing It Right

Good article in iMedia Connection by Kent Lewis, President of Anvil Media today.  He touts 6 well-known brands (ok...5 of 6 are well known) that are using social media in effective ways.  Top 6 include:

1. Blackberry on My Space - sure My Space has taken it's knocks but it's still a big play in social and Blackberry uses a custom-skinned profile page, interactive banner with promotions, free wallpaper and a discussion board on My Space to better and engage with its fans

2. Hewlett Packard on Linked In - HP taps Linked In to post jobs, as questions and create groups which helps to not just promote the company but connect with it's members

3. Kodak on it's own Blog - a number of Kodak employees write on the blog, update content, post interesting photos and drive interaction via contests 

4. Lion Brand Yarn on Facebook - gotta admit I've never heard of this company but Lewis' agency helped LBY create a presence on Facebook in all the regular ways - industry info, status updates, q&a, getting fans to share knitting patterns, etc.  And believe it or not LBY has over 41,000 fans!

5. Zappos on Twitter - it's tough for corporations to find a good fit on Twitter so Zappos encourages all its employees to use Twitter and engage in the social media experience, even Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has over 1.5MM followers and that's gotta be good for business

6. Nike on YouTube - Nike has created its own SB (skateboard) channel on YouTube and the 9 videos posted there have already generated over 1.4MM views, plus the channel has north of 14,000 subscribers, great way to allow consumers to interact with the brand

Although I think Lewis plays it safe with the social media properties listed these are all good examples of brands using social media to boost customer engagement and interaction.  

  

5 Ways to Manage Like A CEO

If you are anything like me you believe the learning process in business never ends.  That's why I always like reading about news ways to engage customers, improve my win/close rate, manage better, and lead more effectively.  Along that line of thinking I enjoyed the BNET article by Steve Tobak yesterday on 5 new ways to manage like a CEO, especially because a few of the 5 are contrarian and will cause debate. Here's the list:

1. Focus on critical, trouble areas and leave everything else alone - others might argue that you should focus on areas that are succeeding and help make those even better or identifying new opportunities to grow the business but it may makes sense to leave the good alone and tackle the trouble spots

2. Hire functional experts who are also solid, upcoming managers - the point being that you can coach people to be good managers but it's much harder to find the right people to fit the roles in the first place

3. Business comes first - this one will likely cause the most debate (and did if you look at the comments posted by readers of Tobak's article), yes the focus of business is business which means taking care of customers and driving sales but in the business world today I believe it's essential to take care of your employees, too

4. Manage up - this becomes more and more important as you move up the ladder and critical at the CEO level (heck he/she has to manage the BOD), I've learned the hard way that when you only focus on your team and don't properly manage the expectations of your boss you soon find yourself looking for a new job, another way of saying it is "make your boss look good and you look good"

5. Help to "manage the company" - most of us put the blinders on, head down, get the job done, and go home, but you need to look beyond your own little world, when you look at things wearing the big company/corporate hat you've got a great opportunity to be be recognized and move up

I've never been a CEO but there's some good nuggets here on how to manage like one. 

  

Ad Age Marketer Of The Year Is...HYUNDAI

Really?  Hyundai?  That little auto maker from Korea that makes those inexpensive cars?  Yes, THAT Hyundai.  And they won "handily" according to Ad Age beating Walmart, Mickey D's, Lego, and Amazon by getting 40% of the reader vote. 

A big reason was Hyundai's Super Bowl campaign which went right to the heart of the American economic problem: if you buy a Hyundai and lose your job/income you can return the car with no impact on your credit.  That was one bold claim and it got a lot of folks who were going through tough times to take a first, second, or even third look at Hyundai.  Clearly the campaign worked:

- Hyundai market share surged from 3.1% in '08 to 4.3% in '09 (first 10 months)

- In September Hyundai increased new car sales by 27% (the industry average was a drop of 22%)

Best quote from the article in Ad Age came from Scott Fink, chairman of Hyundai's national dealer council. "These same people that never would have been caught dead in a Hyundai...now they are very comfortable because the brand has been elevated.  We used to be a price player, but now we're a mainstream player."

I've got to admit...that new Genesis is a good looking car (dare I say it looks a lot like a Mercedes Benz?) and if I was in the market for a new vehicle I wouldn't certainly take a test drive.

Congrats Hyundai.