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Posts from Web 2.0 & Social Media

How will your conversation with customers change in the world of Web 2.0 and beyond?

October 29

adidas embodies brand as a service with miCoach

On Friday, October 23rd 2009, adidas launched the next generation of miCoach – the interactive coaching system that delivers audible coaching while you run. At its conception miCoach was a means by which to allow users to experience the adidas brand in their daily life.

Home

An innovative blend of hardware, software, and web experience – the system empowers users to set and achieve goals – being coached by adidas every step of the way. The system allows a user to manage their active life, and be motivated by seeing their workout results on a highly immersive web experience.

Workout

For adidas, the interactions that users have with miCoach reinforces the users relationship with the adidas. In other words, it creates time with the brand. This approach is a more effective investment of marketing money because of the depth and longevity of the interaction with the target audience. Moreover, the interaction creates valuable insights into customer behavior and allows adidas to market to the user in a more relevant way – in the context of the users life.

The service itself has been extended to allow users to take miCoach into the users social realm – namely Facebook. Users are now able to share their latest workout with their personal friends via Facebook or email. The benefit for the user is that they can share an important aspect of their life with friends. For adidas, this is an invaluable manner in which to get trusted referrals for their service (and brand) to a broader populous.

Molecular has been a key part of the realization of this adidas service from its conception. By partnering with Molecular, adidas has a partner capable of pairing insightful user experience design, stellar creative and deep technical expertise to bring miCoach to life. As the nascent marketing initiative transforms into an exemplary digital and business marketing stalwart, Molecular is enabling adidas to push the boundaries of interactions with its key audiences.

miCoach has successfully bridged the gap between the users analog and digital daily lives. By providing hardware to coach you while you run and then parlaying that information to the web where the users transformation is illuminated, adidas is establishing its brand in the users life. miCoach is the future of marketing and branding.

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Technology, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

October 27

The Boston Celtics Team Up with Molecular to Create “3-Point Play” Facebook Game

by Anne Curtin

Interactive Game Designed to Engage and Entertain Fans, Help Team Gain Strategic Insight into Increasingly Important Facebook Fan Base

3-Point-PlayGIF Famed NBA franchise The Boston Celtics (www.celtics.com) has teamed up with Molecular to launch a first-of-its-kind interactive Facebook application for fans. The application, called “3-Point Play”, is part of the team’s broader interactive marketing strategy, which aims to harness and draw insight from the enthusiasm of 430,000+ Celtics fans participating in the team’s massive Facebook community (http://facebook.com/celtics).

How the Celtics’ Facebook 3-Point Play works:

Fans compete against their Facebook friends and Celtics fans from around the world, challenging each other to accurately predict the statistical output of their favorite players each game by Points, Rebounds and Assists
Prizes are awarded throughout the season, with top winners competing for highly-coveted playoff tickets
3-Point Play is ready to tip off, launching on the Celtics’ Facebook page ahead of the regular season opener on October 27 against the Cleveland Cavaliers
As fans make their picks, the Celtics glean greater insight into their online fans’ behaviors and preferences

Molecular’s goals in creating 3-Point Play were, first, to create an online experience that would resonate with fans and keep them engaged throughout the season, and second, to design a marketing tool that would help the Celtics get to know their Facebook fans even better, allowing them to create a more relevant and compelling marketing strategy for this community of digital consumers. 3-Point Play is the newest component of the team’s growing menu of digital media offerings, which include the team’s official Twitter feed (@Celtics has 20,000+ followers), its official YouTube page (http://youtube.com/bostonceltics), and GameTime Live, a first-of-its-kind in the NBA interactive game-tracking and blogging application found exclusively on Celtics.com.

Play Celtics 3-Point Play now! Get your picks in for tonight’s game and compete against your Facebook friends for Celtics prizes like tickets, jerseys and more!

posted to: Molecular News, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

October 14

How to Make Twitter Measurable

by Evan Gerber

More than ever, hard numbers are necessary to demonstrate success; they are incontrovertible, easy to communicate, and can point out what is or is not working. For new media darling Twitter, marketers are finding more tools to help them understand how their efforts are performing.

There are five tools to consider, but first you have to know what to measure. Not all of the tools out there are going to be helpful. Some are introspective, looking at how the Twitter campaign is presented. Others are quantitative tools to analyze traffic, trends and follower count. First, make a measurement plan, noting what is important to the organization and how to justify the success of the campaign. What does success look like? What are the key things that need to happen? List these goals and then determine reliable tools to measure progress.

Five Useful Tools for Tracking Twitter Success

TwInfluence. Track not only how many listeners you have, but also how concentrated your audience is, and the rate at which your campaign is growing.
TwitAlyzer. Measure your popularity, signal-to-noise ratio, and how many times you’re being cited. This is valuable if your aim is to become a thought leader. Twitalyzer also lets you tie into Google Analytics and collect information on site traffic coming from Twitter. This can provide insight into how the digital marketing channel is being influenced by a Twitter campaign.
TwitterFriends. Get detailed insight on who you’re interacting with on Twitter. This includes everything from a map indicating where your followers are to the average length of a given tweet. This helps provide clarity on who is responding, how frequently and the nature of these interactions. This information can be useful in the planning stages of a Twitter campaign, as well as tracking once the work is in progress.
Trendistic. Get an understanding of trends in Twitter. Enter a keyword and see how it is referenced in the space over time. It’s possible to see up to 180 days worth of information.
TweetEffect. Find out how individuals are reacting to your posts. By entering the user ID and clicking search, you get a summary of recent changes, as well as adds or losses based on specific tweets. It’s an excellent way to see what is resonating with followers and what is not.

As more users flock to Twitter, developers are coming up with tools that enable marketers to measure a multitude of interactions. While the information may not be 100% accurate, it is close enough to accurately capture trends in the space.

posted to: Data & Analytics, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

October 14

Facebook pages want to know: Are you for real?

by Yuval Zukerman

Following up on my post on Facebook fan pages, InsideFacebook’s Eric Eldon broke the news that Facebook is working harder to verify the authenticity of the people behind fan pages on its site. If you are fan of say, Lenovo laptops, there was nothing preventing you from setting up a fan page for the company. If Lenovo decided to launch their own fan page at a later date, they would wake up to the fact that it was already occupied or taken. Brands are left with little options other than join forces with people who do not necessarily behoove to their marketing message, or try and launch a page in parallel, to varying degrees of success. Contacting Facebook for help does not guarantee you action or relief.

We feel fan pages hold great promise. A story on PRI radio show Marketplace tells the story of The Coca-Cola company successfully teaming up with individuals who set up its fan page before its own marketing team got to it. The brand’s strength and its passionate following helped it garner a following that is almost 4 million users strong.

Hopefully the new verification measures will reduce the chances of such brand name squatting on Facebook.

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Web 2.0 & Social Media | 3 Comments »

October 2

Shift in the advertising power base

by Dirk Reckerman

After years of anticipation – the shift from traditional to digital is becoming real. The UK became the first major economy to achieve this milestone – according to the Internet Advertising Bureau of Britain. Internet ad spend accounted for 23.5% of the British advertising market . Print was still in first place, with 30% of the market, but had recorded steep declines.

As the internet begins to replace print as the primary source of consumer news and information, as well as encroach upon television as a deliver vehicle for info-entertainment, this trend will only continue to be more exaggerated.

The industries recovering from the global economic downturn will demand measurable channels in which to spend their marketing budgets. Internet has an inherent advantage around measureability – although solid practices enabling this are still in its early stages . As he internet transitions into the central medium around which overall marketing campaigns will be based, digital marketers will be tapped to deliver robust strategies to lead the marketing initiatives within their organizations.

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »