Is 1 Twitterer worth 125 Facebookers?

Interesting observation while checking out analytics for one of the social media campaigns we’re running at Atmosphere: the brands facebook fan page has 20,000 members (its been running  a while) the still new twitter group has about 160. Yet the traffic coming to our microsite is roughly equal from the two places despite very similar content being posted. My shoddy maths makes 1 twitterer worth 125 facebookers for this brand. My take on it is this:

• Facebook is pretty mainstream in SA now vs Twitter which has been adopted largely by those interested in social media so Twits are more curious and active vs Facebookers which are passive (at least with brands)
• The shortness and lack of visuals on Twitter mean to consume the content we put up you have to click through vs Facebook where its much easier to digest our content in one place
• Maybe the limitations of Twitter mean we’ve worked harder to tease the content in short succing bites than our posts on Facebook where we can say as much as we like

Steri Stumpie update

Our campaign for Steri Stumpie is still rolling – we did our second appointment of a official unofficial brand ambassador yesterday at UCT. This basically involved giving a Steri fan a whole bunch of stuff to the sounds of a marching band. We then toured the campus playing Dancing Queen. This is also my first video edit ever – other than some shaky camera work i think its quite cute?

The campaign is picking up some nice compliments – still early days but should be a good case study (and also an encouragement to other clients to let us go down a more imaginative path). Its a collaboration with King James RSVP, Mnemonic and Atmosphere (all part of the King James Group) so also great example of team work between different agencies.

SLXS said this.

and Chris Rawlinson said this.

Marketing to a 3.5 second attention span

My generation (gen x) supposedly has an attention span of 3.5 minutes (the average length of an MTV pop video). The web has reduced this to about 3.5 seconds I reckon (about the length of time to read and digest a twitter post). Marketing to the internet generation requires new methods (sticking a 30 second spot on a flash video is not going to be the answer obviously).

I did a talk to the IABC last night on online pr which covered some of this (in brief these were my suggestions):

• Content needs to have immediate and easy appeal or at least offer enough of a tease to suck people into a longer engagement (the Best Job In The World campaign is a great example timed to break just as the northern hemisphere goes back to work in the middle of winter the offer of escaping to be caretaker of a tropical island has immediate appeal that’s easy and relevant to consume).
• Communications should be in short snacks of information and aim to draw people into a longterm relationships/communications – the marketing industry is built around intensive campaigns that are often short-burst this may need to change to be really effective
• We need to consider where our message is being consumed (at home, at work while avoiding doing tasks or increasingly on the move)
• Consumers are now talking back (via Twitter for example) assuming your marketing plan is to have a conversation with them its going to have to be a longterm commitment (its going to look weird when you suddenly shut up once “the campaign” is over)
• We need to understand the currency that works with web consumers they expect to be paid for their attention with something of value: free stuff, genuine entertainment, an ego massage/traffic to their web stuff
• Despite web 2.0 asking consumers to generate content for a brand is a big ask and requires a suitable incentive (most user generated content campaigns seem to struggle)
• I’ve posted on this already this week but the tone needs to be conversational and not ad copy (no one wants to talk to an ad)
• As more and more people are competing for attention there is a rapid arms race of ideas happening to cut through the clutter things often need to be unexpected and random (hence marketing getting more and more surreal/wacky)
• Ideas need to be micro targeted – the idea of hitting everyone with a massively viewed viral piece is pretty unrealistic these days – many consumers are buried in online communities around specific interest groups. Maybe its better to target smaller groups and use language and content appropriate to them (e.g. target bands and their followers or communities of mothers)

Morgan Stanley’s intern scores a PR coup

Some nice PR from Morgan Stanley around a report drafted for them by a 15 year old intern on teenagers media usage. This has picked up tons of press coverage from Time Magazine to the FT and Telegraph and turned the intern into an over night media star. Not sure if this happened spontaneously or was planned but it works because it’s a surprising (to some) piece of work that most people wouldn’t expect to come from a (rather boring sounding) company like Morgan Stanley.

For more check out this from AFP and this from the BBC.

Steri Stumpie marching band performance

That said our (collaboration between King James RSVP, Mnemonic and Atmosphere) Steri Stumpie campaign totally rocks. This was filmed in the office on Friday when the Steri band had its first performance. We’ve hired these guys as a reward for the brands Official Unofficial brand ambassadors. We’ll be doing one of these a month. Tons of fun.