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Prius projects pop up in our portfolio Monday, July 20th, 2009

Kermit the Frog was wrong: It is easy being green! Zazoo’s most recent projects for Toyota Australia, created with HotHouse, have revolved around this month’s launch of the new model Prius hybrid car in Australia.

The “Prius People” vodcast project employs a social media-oriented relationship-building approach, presenting a slice of life with interesting Australians. We got the chance to work with some inspiring and remarkable people including environmentalists Tim Flannery and Tanya Ha, Eye Foundation CEO Belinda Sullivan, Today Show nutritionist Joanna McMillan Price, and technology experts Peter Blasina and Nick Broughall. Three of the videos launched this week and you can see them here.

Also with HotHouse, Zazoo implemented a blogger engagement program for Toyota as part of the Prius launch, organising information sessions for several of Australia’s top bloggers.

For more information see the Our Work page.


More on success measurement for social media Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

Success measures for online activities is one of my hobby-horses. I’m pleased to report that an excellent article has been published on Econsultancy outlining 10 ways to measure social media success. I suggest you follow the link and read the whole article, but here’s the list:

  1. Traffic
  2. Interaction
  3. Sales
  4. Leads
  5. Search marketing
  6. Brand metrics
  7. PR
  8. Customer engagement
  9. Retention
  10. Profits

Chris Lake writes, “The key with social media measurement, I think, is to stand back and take a widescreen approach to measurement.

“Rather than focusing on the smaller, campaign-specific metrics, such as traffic from Twitter or the number of fans on Facebook, wouldn’t it be better to look at how it helps to shift the most important business KPIs, such as sales, profits, as well as customer retention and satisfaction rates?

“….Like TV advertising, social media will play a role in moving brand metrics, and perhaps more so (it is easier to make a noise and to be socially active; there’s an anytime, anywhere factor at work here. And hey, shit sticks around longer when you throw it online).”

As always, the comments are just as thought-provoking as the article. They include:

“Engagement is certainly on the lips of every nonprofit digital person; as mission-based organisations that’s supposedly what we exist for. But i’m losing faith with the idea of measuring it. Dare i suggest it’s something that you have to _feel_ …?”

“I’ve often asked industry experts how to measure social and nobody has a compelling answer. The industry as a whole is divided on this. Social media is the new mullet!”

“There’s a contradiction at play. With TV and print, measurement doesn’t seem to be a big deal, despite the fact that they often claim the vast share of ad budgets. However these same people will make demands for ‘a single planning currency’ for online, to ‘improve’ measurement.”

This will become a more salient issue as experience in the medium grows and measurement technology improves. Watch out TV!


More on Twitter - paradigm-shifter, or flash in the pan? Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

Finding Twitter more fascinating the more I explore it.

Have installed TweetDeck to manage the firehose of activity.

Waiting to hear back from Mr Tweet, who will tell me who I should be following (how many of them am I already following?)

Am starting to think in <140 character bursts - am annoying the heck out of my wife!

OK, enough of that, back to proper blogging mode… as the media declares the death of MySpace and the rise of Facebook, has the digerati (or is that twitterati) already moved on to Twitter as the next big thing? Not everyone thinks so. Sean Carton has written a thought-provoking piece on ClickZ comparing Twitter to Second Life (which is so early 2008 (or maybe even 2007)) “and other now-embarrassing fads.”

He quotes stats showing that ‘only’ 200,000 people are using the service, and that 1% are super-users (he uses the word ‘addicts’) who account for 34% of all ‘tweets’.

He writes that, “the people writing most of the glowing reviews about Twitter are probably its most avid users and are therefore part of a hermetically sealed group that lacks perspective. People who write about technology online are paid (well, ‘paid’ might sometimes be a relative term) to write about online technology and to be the first to use it. Pumping a new technology makes them look smarter and raises their street cred because it gets others to use it and makes them (and I’ll even include myself in the ‘them’ here) look like they got the scoop before everyone else.”

Not surprisingly, this has sparked a lot of debate, with strong arguments on both sides. As one commenter writes, “In 12 months, this will look like the most ridiculous thing posted on ClickZ in 2008. Citing Twitter’s April, 2008 usage numbers is absurd in this context. Usage has increased by at least 1000% since then (reported and estimated by several good sources). The examples of real business being done on Twitter, major company heads using Twitter to reach out to their customer base, journalists relying on Twitter for sources… These are not ‘let’s take on a fake identity and chat to other cartoons’ like Second Life. Twitter is becoming the new email, and you miss the boat at your own peril.”

The next comment on the list: “Consider me in peril because Twitter is useless.”

TechCrunch has just published a post which backs up the observation that Carton’s numbers were low, while Denise Zimmerman on iMedia has written a good guide to ‘Becoming a Twitter all-star’. There are many more salient postings, such as the one I heard about on Twitter this morning but which has already been washed away in the flood of postings, where the writer said to treat Twitter like a river - you step into it on occassion, get wet and splash around, and get out again; the point is to not worry about all the water flow you miss when you’re not in the river.

To extend the analogy, I think you also have to make sure you don’t wade too deep that you get in over your head and drown. Here’s to a strong swimming stroke for 2009!