RSVP Etiquette – So much technology, so few responses.

Hello blogosphere,

I know that my entries are usually based on a specific company or happening, but I’m taking a different route today.  I’ll be using a personal experience and combining it with some vital information, that I think everyone in our technologically savvy world should consider.

I had a party this weekend for my college graduation … a momentous occasion, obviously!  I invited over 50 people,   my method of invitation: Facebook Invites.  Now, for those of you new to the social media frenzy, Facebook invites give you an area to describe the event (time, date, place, etc.) , it shows the people who have responded yes, no, and “maybe”, as well as areas for comments.  For those of you who are more  visual learners, here’s an example:

Of the 40 people I invited to this party, 23 responded yes, 10 responded no, and the rest responded “maybe”.  Understanding that sometimes things come up, I sent a message out 1) on facebook, and 2) through text message to my “maybe” guests that stated, “Those of you who are maybe’s, please do your best to let me know ahead of time whether or not you will be here because I need to have a good count for food preparation.”  I heard back from about half of them which brought my attendance count to over 30 people.  Party day arrived and 15 people attended. I didn’t hear from anyone letting me know they wouldn’t be there, or something came up.

Here’s my question:

With all of the technology that we have today, is it really that hard to let someone know you won’t be there?

We’ve got cell phones, and internet … we’ve got cell phones WITH internet, and yet we can’t respond accordingly.  It takes 2 seconds to shoot a text that says, “sorry, won’t be there”, and even less time to BBM someone.  We’ve got facebook which you can reply to a status, write on someone’s wall, or remove yourself from a guest list.  Twitter allows you 140 characters to say, “Not going to the party today, something came up”!  Our society claims to be so reliant on these “forms of  communication”,  and yet we’re, somehow, not connecting.

I guess the point of this entry is to open people’s eyes.  We have so many devices that allow us to expand our communication methods, and yet communication is disappearing in our world. I think we all need to sit back, take a good look at what we have around us, and use everything accordingly.

More social media workings to come, I just felt the need to throw this out there.

Southwest Airlines Continuing to Go Social

My interest for social media has me searching for companies who have done it the right way. After reading an article from PR Daily about Southwest Airlines (http://ow.ly/15GEaQ) I decided it was something to look into.

Southwest launched there blog (http://www.blogsouthwest.com/) in 2006. To date, SWA has continued their successful blog but has also worked their way outside the blogosphere with a Twitter account (@SouthwestAir), a Flickr group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/southwestairlines/) where people can post pictures of SWA flights, a Facebook Fan site (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/Southwest?ref=s) to keep people updated on SWA items, and a YouTube site (http://www.youtube.com/user/NutsAboutSouthwest) which contains videos about SWA destinations, and some other fun info.

The best part about Southwest Airlines, they don’t just HAVE these sites, they USE them (sounds a little obvious, but you’d be surprised!). Looking into their news releases, they always have something going on. The most recent: the celebration for bringing SWA to LaGuardia! On June 28th, they launched their “New Service, New Attitude, New York” themed celebration. Southwest Customers and Employees dined on New York style bagels while being serenaded by Southwest’s rapping flight attendant, David Holmes (video of it on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpNbvcGxhrk)

On June 26th, SWA sent out a Tweet that said, “Get ready 4 “tweet in 2″- giving spots on our 1st LGA flts 2 peeps that attended Southwest Social! U have 2 mins to tweet back and claim it!” . They did the same thing on the 24th for people in the DC area. On the day of the event, everything was documented on Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and their blog!

The mission of Southwest Airlines is,”dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit.” I don’t know all of you, but I think if the company keeps all of this up, their bound to be around for a while!

Spreading the LUV through social media… Southwest Airlines!

Senior Thesis : Conclusion and Methodology

Conclusion

The media people use today may be very different than has been used in the past.  Web 2.0 is taking charge, and companies are taking advantage of it.  New media is not a tool to use to make things easier; it is a series of things that make the following spectrum broader.  New media helps consumers follow companies and people, and helps companies see what it is that their consumers really want.  The audience is the key part of new media.  Just like the first communications model, new media still follows the same basics.  There will always be someone sending a message, someone receiving the message, and then it starts all over again.  The analyses of these four campaigns were used to show the difference in how companies use new media, and why some succeeded and some failed.  There will always be steps to take, in all aspects of media.  One click of a button won’t get you anywhere… it’s the follow through that get’s you there.

Methodology

In order to complete this qualitative study, the researcher gathered data on audiences, new social media, and companies that are altering or adding to the way they reach out to their target audiences.  The paper followed four different companies and people that used new social media to market a product or an idea, two of which were successful, one of which learned from its’ mistakes and one that failed.

Using descriptions of how they used new social media, following blogs, twitter accounts, facebook profiles, fan pages, podcast sign ups, as well as other social media, the researcher was able to determine the successful or unsuccessful “reach out rate”.  The researcher also analyzed audiences and how they reacted to certain instances.  Using the book, “The New Rules of Marketing & PR”, by David Meerman Scott, the researcher identified the aspects of each campaign and what made it either the successful or unsuccessful.

The difficult part about writing this paper was that so much of today’s media is biased.  There were many different articles written on the same campaigns, some of which thought the campaign was genius and others that thought it was terrible.  The researcher tried to stick to campaigns that were more noted in today’s society, so that it was something that everyone could relate to while reading the paper.  All in all, the researcher enjoyed writing the paper and found some very useful information.

Senior Thesis : Literature Review Pt. 4 – President Obama’s Campaign

President Obama’s Grassroot Presidential Campaign

President Obama’s slogan, “Change, We Can Believe In” was accurate on many levels throughout his campaign.  Anyone who followed the campaign, knew what was going on every step of the way due to the vast amounts of people who got involved.

In  a case study done on Obama’s strategy, it was shown just how much new media played a role in Obama’s campaign.  Not only did he develop his own social media site, MyBarackObama.com, where people could sign up, plan their own events, keep track of how many doors they knocked on, phone calls they made, and e-mails they sent, he also developed pages on many other sites.  About 2 million profiles were created on MyBarckObama.com, about 200,000 offline events were planned, about 400,000 blog posts were written, and about 35,000 volunteer groups were created.

He also ran in-game ads in 18 games such as Burnout Paradise for the X-Box 360.  The case study also stated that he gained 5 million supporters in other social networks besides his own, maintained a profile in more than 15 online communities, and had about 3.2 million students sign up as his supporter on Facebook.  On YouTube alone, by the end of the election, Obama had a little over 1800 videos posted, over 120,000,000 views of the videos, and about 150,000 subscribers.  In accordance with all of those social networking sites, he obtained a LinkedIn page, as well as a Flickr page (where on the day of the election you could see continuous updates of pictures of how nervous he was!).  Obama’s Twitter page skyrocketed during the elections, and still continues to today with over 1,000,000 followers and daily, hourly postings.  (SocialMedia8)

Obama knew, going into the election, what he needed to do to win.  In an interview with U.S News and World Report on February 15^th, 2008, Obama said “When I decided to run, … my calculation was that it was a long shot but that there was a possibility that the skills I had to offer—bringing people together, a track record of pushing against the special interests, a 20-year history of working at a grass-roots level to help working families, pretty well-developed evidence of being straight with people—that that might be what the country needs right now…”   And, ever was he right.

The most important part of this campaign, besides him winning it, is the continuous work with the people who helped him.  It is no longer a question of whether or not it is possible, but instead a question of if he can withhold his grassroots background and keep America involved.

Senior Thesis : Literature Review Pt. 3 – Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola

Coca Cola was established in 1886, and through all of the rough times and competition, is still one of the top refreshment brands today.  They own 4 of the world’s top 5 nonalcoholic sparkling beverage brands, they operate in 200+ countries, they serve nearly 1.6 billion consumers a day, and they have more than 3,000 products.  (Coca Cola Company, 2009).  Why would a company this big, and this successful “upgrade” their status, and start using social media?  Because they’re smart.  Their  Coca-Cola mission is to refresh the world, to inspire moments of optimism, and to create value and make a difference.  If not anything else, the steps that Coke has taken this past year should have given them many moments of optimism.

In  case study presented by Adam Brown of Coca-Cola, he stated, “…back in the day you would have heard me say, our home page isn’t just coke.com, it’s google.com … now… it’s google.com, technorati.com, facebook.com…”.  He also stated in his presentation that Coca-Cola’s strategy is to Review, Record, Respond, and Redirect. (Brown, 2009)

Coca-Cola has done an amazing job at not only reachin out to the “new media era” audience, but also the people who followed them in the past.  Coca-Cola has an official blog called Coca-Cola Conversations which is written and updated by a man by the name of Phil Mooney, who has served as the historian/archivist for Coca-Cola for the last 30 years.  The blog contains a wide variety of topics, ranging from our role in pop culture to brand history to Coke collectibles. (Mooney, 2009).  It reaches out to a wide variety of audiences, and encourages people to write back and give their input, something Coke probably couldn’t have gotten this far without.

Besides a blog, Coke also has an individual Twitter page for each product, a LinkdIn profile, a Facebook Fan page, and their pwn person widget, CokeTag.  CokeTag was released “because they believe that connecting people and giving them a way to share what matters is one of the many things that helps define The Coke Side of Life.”  (CokeTag, 2009).

The Facebook fan page was created by two users who liked Coke. What started as a fan page for fun, turned out to be the largest product fan page on Facebook.  Coca Cola, instead of taking over the page and making it their own, rewarded the fans by bringing them to Atlanta and giving them a tour of the Coke facility. The fan page remains theirs, but now they have the blessing and help of Coca Cola.  By empowering the fans to keep their fan page, Coke ensures a passionate page owner.   The Coca Cola marketing team was also smart enough to realize that letting others know what happened here would work in their favor. The fan page creators were told to make a video of the history behind the fan page, and how Coke had reached out to them and rewarded them for this. (Balwani, 2009)

Part of the Action Plan for Harnessing the Power of the New Rules states that you should define your organizations goals first, then based on the goals decide whether or not you want to provide the content for free and without registration.  It is also stated that you should write for your audience using examples and stories, and of course make it interesting.  (Scott, 2007).  Throughout this year, Coke has done an amazing job of launching new items, keeping a close eye on their followers, rewarding those that gice them press, and continuing on based on their target audiences reactions.   Coke has made this new media campaign come full circle, and they don’t seem to be anywhere near done yet.

Senior Thesis : Literature Review Pt. 2 – Skittle’s

Skittle’s

On March 2^nd, 2009 Skittle’s relaunched it’s homepage, changing it from a “normal” corporate website to a savvy social media whirlwind.  The opening page is  a Twitter feed, and in the upper left corner is a widget that will navigate you through the site.  Anyone who tweets about Skittle’s, or tags it through a hashtag (#), will have their post appear on the Skittle’s homepage.  According to David Berkowitz, a blogger on Search Insider, “the message Skittles is sending: What consumers say about the brand is more important than what the brand has to say to consumers.”

The day after the launchof the new homepage  when people discovered this, they decided to play a few jokes.  According to a blog post by Mashable, “ The jokes might have been a bit too harsh for Skittles, which today switched the homepage from a Twitter search for “Skittles” to their Facebook fan page…” (Schroeder, 2009).

While Skittle’s appears to be new media savvy, and its’ homepage is run by a Twitter feed, @skittles has 3 friends and an icon which is a cat that says “sup”.  Another questinable item on the table; you need to enter a date of birth in order to get into the Skittle’s website, due to the fact that the monitering may not be completely up to par and inappropriate comments may be seen on the Twitter feed.

Skittle’s is supposed to be a children’s candy, are targeting the people they should be with this new website?

The next thing that seems to catch people’s attention is the widget in the top left corner that navigates you through the site.  Even when minimized, this widget takes over majority of the left side of the screen.  If the point of the Twitter feed is so that they can show what their consumers have to say, wouldn’t they want people to see it?

Rob, a daily blogger for TwitTown wrote an article on the pros and cons of Skittle’s new homepage, stating that it was a “bold stroke of marketing brilliance, a total surrender of their brand to the power of social networking, crowd-sourcing and the freedom of information.  And the thing is, it may be foolproof – as much trouble and flak as the Skittles brand might have brought upon themselves, there’s one thing they’re guaranteed to get even more of – press.”  Later on in the cons part of the article, he also points out, “How does such a move actually help the Skittles brand?  Showing that they’re “hip” to Web 2.0 social networking doesn’t change anything about the product itself, and won’t convince people who don’t buy Skittles to go out and do so. If anything, all it shows is that Skittles is desperate to get attention in whatever format they can, regardless of whether or not it hurts the brand. This is a short-term tactical burst, not a long-term strategic plan. “ (Rob, 2009)

When it comes to a Web-site, “…there is much more to think about then the content of the site.  Design, color, navigation, and appropriate technology are all important aspects og a good web site… Thus, the best web sites focus primarily on the content to pull together the various buyers, markets, media, and products in one comprehensive place…” (Scott, 2007.)

Skittle’s has all of the necessary information throughout the site, but it is hard to navigate and gives no real insentive to be there.  With the exception of giving people excitement to see their name and  comment on a home page, there is no real reason for people to visit the site.  A very important aspect of social media is to identify your target audience, focus on them and what they want, and respond accordingly.  The Skittle’s home page launch is extremely one-sided, a lot of the company watching and not enough of the company responding to the public.

Senior Thesis : Literature Review Pt. 1 – Denny’s

Denny’s

On February 1^st , 2009, Denny’s released what was supposed to be a commercial that caught the attention of people and made them realize that Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast was a “serious breakfast” compared to their competitors “silly breakfasts”.  The commercial was a huge hit, in fact, it was rated one of the “Top 10 Superbowl Commercials of 2009”.

Denny’s took the excitement and ran with it, and decided that since the video had gone viral so fast that they would make Nannerpuss a “celebrity”.  All of a sudden Nannerpuss had taken storm with a Facebook profile, a Twitter account,  a MySpace account, pictures of Flickr and of course the video that had gone viral on YouTube.  What Denny’s didn’t do, however, is follow their audience.  What could have been an amazing opportunity for the restaurant slowly turned downhill, and the 3 milion dollars they spent on the SuperBowl commercial didn’t seem to be as successful as had hoped.

The end of the Nannerpuss commercial stated that on February 3^rd, 2009 all Denny’s restaurants would be serving free Grand Slam breakfasts from 6am to 2pm.  The result, a flood of hungry people looking for free food.  According to Nelson Marchioli, Denny’s CEO, “Denny’s served approximately 2 million Grand Slams across the U.S. An average of 130 Grand Slams were served per restaurant per hour over the eight hour event.”  The event was obviously a success that day, but did it continue in it’s success after the event?

Kim Dushikski of Mobile Marketing Profits, a blog on mobile marketing, wrote, “But I can’t help but wonder what Denny’s is like the day after the big giveaway? While their business may be up due to more people thinking about having pancakes for breakfast, I am certain they don’t have lines around the buildings today.” (Dushinski, 2009).

Did Denny’s follow up?  Not right away!  According to David Meerman Scott, “When we had three networks, and no cable, it was different.  In the time-shifted, multichannel, Webcentric world of the longtail, YouTube, TiVo, and blogs, spending big bucks on ads is like commissioning a portrait back to the nineteenth century:  it might make you feel good, but does it bring you any money?”  (Scott, 2007.)

Many options could have been persued including a mobile reminder in the commercial that said “Text FREE to 5555 to receive reminders on more Free Grabd Slam breakfastsin the future”.  Denny’s then would have accumulated millions of numbers for advertising, then they could have used Nannerpuss to serve as a reminder on all of the new media sites.

Did Denny’s realize they made a mistake?  About a month after the SuberBowl ad was scene and the free giveaway happened, Denny’s realized they were back where they started.  The numbers plummeted, and as before the worry of McDonald’s and Starbucks were back.  What did Denny’s do?  On March 10^th, Denny’s launched their Twitter account, @dennysgrandslam,  tweeting:  Getting excited about using Twitter to communicate with Denny’s fans!

Now, Denny’s uses their Twitter to hold contests such as asking trivia questions about Denny’s, having people tweet and retweet Denny’s GrandSlam coupons which in turn gets them a free one, and more.  Their account has over 1500 followers!  I think they learned.  Now, as opposed to solely entertaining their customers, they are listening to them and responding.

As Denny’s learned, “for marketers, one of the coolest things about the Web is that whe nan idea takes off, it can propel a brand or company to fame and fortune for free…”(Scott, 2007.)  Was the 3 million dollars Denny’s spent on the SuperBowl ads necessary?  Probably not.  It prbably helped get the word out there, and it definitely served in the entertainment aspect of things, but they probably could have done it without all of the money.  “The challenge for marketers is to harness the amazing power of viral.” (Scott, 2007.)

Senior Thesis Introduction : New Media

Nonverbal or verbal, word of mouth or technological, all of these are very different types of communication with one very big commonality, the audience.

Since the beginning of time, audiences have played a huge role in society. “It began with a face to face audience, in the presence of a communicator or an entertainer” (Gillespie, 2005). Later on down the line, “nineteenth century entertainment turned to twentieth century mass media” (Butsch).

The introduction of newspapers and print gave the ability to reach out to a larger number of people faster then they would have been able to in the past. “The emergence of …printed book… allowed effective communication at a distance in space and time and also privacy in use.” (McQuail, 1997).

After the emergence of print media, other methods of reaching people started to pop up. Reaching out to people was no longer solely based on gathering groups and asking questions or having them test products, or going door to door to see how people felt about a product. It started to become about trying to reach out to as many people as humanly possible, and getting a reaction.

Television and cinema were the next available ways of reaching out. The two gave companies the ability to market their products, by branding, on big screens that hundreds and thousands of people could see at once.

The reaction that companies got from the emergence of the big screen only continued to give them bigger and better ideas – to reach out to a bigger and better audience. Lucky for them, the Internet gave them a chance to do just that. Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web in 1991, and it gave companies the opportunity to reach out to people all over the world. Now, in the 21^st century, “the Internet represents the newest, most widely discussed, and perhaps most significant manifestation of new media” (Flew, 2005).

What exactly is new media? “The idea of new media captures both the development of unique forms of digital media, and the remaking and the remaking of more traditional media forms to adopt and adapt to the new media technologies” (Flew, 2005). Simply put, new media is an update and an upgrade to the technological resources that have been placed before the public.

“In early 2007, the results of a groundbreaking study into the adoption of social media within the Inc. 500… were released. In 2008, the same group was restudied, and the results were released. According to the study, in 2007 less then half of the companies that responded were familiar with social networking sites, message/bulletin boards, blogging, online videos, podcasting, and wikis. The study that was done in 2008 showed that over half of the companies were familiar with social networking sites, blogging, and online videos. It also showed that in 2007, 43% of the responsive companies did not use any type of social media, but in 2008, only 23% were not using it.”

Many companies and people are using new media to their advantage, to broaden their audience. This paper will show multiple examples of companies and people using new media, some of which were successful and others that were not. Using multiple recourses, an analysis of each campaign will be conducted.