The old guard's attempt at a social TV companion just got real with the launch of ConnecTV in open beta for iPad, PC and Mac -- smartphones and Android tablet versions are coming soon. The idea is you'll load up this app while watching TV and find a whole new way to discover details of your favorite content while at the same time share with your friends. The app uses a mic to detect what you're watching just like IntoNow and links up with both Facebook or Twitter (it'll also work on its own). Overall we were underwhelmed and quickly realizing that theotherstartups are way ahead in both release date and functionality. For starters, there are plenty of channels missing and not a single channel number. You can't even search for your favorite shows or channels. But even when it did manage to figure out what we were watching, we felt like we were being forced fed useless data like trivia and ads rather than having useful information like actors or players names at our finger tips. There's no doubt in our mind that the app was designed more to make us discover certain content rather than discover shows based on our actual tastes. Then again, this is the first version out of the gate, but somehow we think ConnecTV's business model will get in the way of ever making anything truly useful.
The explosive growth of social media over the past four years has drastically changed how the Giants and Patriots market themselves and connect with fans compared to the two teams’ most recent Super Bowl trips.
“It’s a whole new world compared to last time,” Nilay Shah, the Giants’ director of digital media, said in an interview.
When the Giants and Patriots reached the Super Bowl in 2008, Twitter barely existed, Facebook had less than 100 million users, and Google+ wasn’t even a gleam in Larry Page’s eye.
Today, Facebook has grown to more than 845 million users, Twitter has become an integral communication tool of the sports and media worlds, and Google+ now claims around 100 million members. Other sharing sites such as YouTube have swelled in popularity too.
“Last time we were here, the social world was still sort of new for us, and our main communication method was email,” Shah said. “We didn’t focus on it a lot back then, but coming back now we knew we had to place a lot of emphasis on it, find a way to incorporate our fans as much as possible and make them a part of the experience.”
“We didn’t focus on it a lot back then, but coming back now we knew we had to place a lot of emphasis on it, find a way to incorporate our fans as much as possible and make them a part of the experience.”
The Giants are among professional sports’ most social media-savvy teams. But Fred Kirsch, the Patriots’ vice president of content, said that growing social networks have played a real role in fan outreach and marketing during New England’s Super Bowl run as well.
When the team won the AFC Championship, it decided to run a contest giving away free trips to the Super Bowl for fans who worked in healthcare, law enforcement, the military, firefighting or education. Kirsch said that the team was able to promote the contest effectively in a short time thanks to Facebook and Twitter, gathering about a thousand nominations.
“It made it tough to choose the winners but it was well worth it,” Kirsch told Mashable in an email.
The Giants, meanwhile, have run a number of promotions built entirely around social media. They installed a button on the team website to allow fans to follow more than a dozen players on Twitter before Super Bowl XLVI with one click. They have a player shooting behind-the-scenes footage — but 10,000 new fans have to “Like” the team’s Facebook page to unlock each day’s content. They are even hosting a “Social Media Night” on Thursday, in which a number of players will participate in a live webcast from the team hotel, answering fan questions sent via Twitter and Facebook. Four more players are hosting exclusive Google+ Hangouts, each with five chosen fans who joined their Google+ Circles.
“It’s more relaxed, more informal, a chance to know the guy behind the uniform.”
Tyson Goodridge was one of the fans selected for a Hangout with linebacker Mark Herzlich. Goodridge, who works as a social media director for a marketing agency, told Mashable his two young sons wanted to ask what players eat before games, while he wanted to ask what goes through the players’ minds in the moments before the ball is snapped.
“It creates a level of intimacy that is so cool,” Goodridge said. “Anyone can know all his stats, but in this case it’s a private session where he’s not in the locker room. It’s more relaxed, more informal, a chance to know the guy behind the uniform.”
That, said Shah, epitomizes the wealth of new engagement possibilities opened up by social media’s maturation since 2008.
“We’ve always tried to provide the best content possible, but before that might have meant just putting up exclusive-access videos and that was it,” he said. “Now we’re able to give the fans more and make them feel like they have a voice.”
BONUS GALLERY: Who to Follow on Twitter for the Super Bowl XLVI Scoop
The official account of the 2012 Indianapolis Super Bowl Host Committee is a must-follow for fans going to the game. It will function as one of several channels directing fans to entertainment venues and addressing logistical concerns from the committee's social meda command center.
About 82% of all adults will receive most of their election news online. The ways U.S. voters are using social media have changed drastically since 2008. Here are some other social media trends driving this year’s election.
Presidential parties and the media are focusing on what’s being said about the election online, because of the wealth of information voters disclose about themselves and about candidates.
Voters have been disclosing their party affiliations, listing the issues they care about and liking presidential candidates they support since 2008. Now in 2012, more candidates are picking up on the trends and joining the conversation; 62% of Americans expect candidates to have a social media presence.
Newt Gingrich leads the Republican presidential candidates on Twitter with more than 1.4 million followers (although how many of those are real is still an open question). Mitt Romney has nearly 308,000; Ron Paul has 221,400 followers and Rick Santorum closes out with 102,000. President Obama, meanwhile, has collected more than 12 million followers.
In short, there is more sharing of election-related content on Facebook and Twitter than ever before.
See the infographic below, created by MDG Advertising, for more ways people are learning and sharing political news.
Tell us in the comments what you think about the growing reach of social media in politics. Do these trends reflect your social media use during the presidential election year?
When Google first rolled out Hangout video chats for Google+, part of the plan involved allowing hanger-outers to watch YouTube videos together. While many questioned the usefulness of the feature, we’re now seeing what Google had in mind all along: a Super Bowl post-game Hangout where users dissect the big game’s commercials.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t part of the Google+ Master Plan at the initial unveiling, but a Hangout based around Super Bowl ads does strike us as one of the better uses of the service’s YouTube integration. Google’s partnering with NBC to run the Hangout, tapping sports business reporter Darren Rovell to host.
“The day after the Super Bowl is when people head back to their office water coolers to discuss what they loved and what they didn’t,” Rovell said in a press release. “Our conversation is about taking all those water cooler conversations and bringing it to a national, digital stage.”
As part of the deal, NBC will promote YouTube’s Ad Blitz, the page where the site asks users to vote on their favorite Super Bowl ads. In turn, YouTube will serve up NBC ads and promos for the big game all weekend. This marks the first time YouTube has had any kind of partnership with the Super Bowl broadcaster. Rovell will reveal the winning ad of the Ad Blitz on his CNBC show, SportsBiz: Game On on Feb. 17.
Google+ Hangouts are generally limited to 10 users, but some users can create “Hangouts on Air,” which expand beyond that limit by allowing others to watch the Hangout as a live stream on YouTube.
Love the idea of an official Google+ Hangout about the ads? Will you join? Let us know in the comments.
BONUS: The Most Popular Super Bowl Ads So Far
1. "The Bark Side" (Vokswagen)
Not surprisingly, the sequel to the most-shared ad of last year's Super Bowl, and of all of 2011 for that matter, is leading the pack this year. Volkswagen released this video last week showing dogs barking to the tune of Star Wars's "The Imperial March." So does that mean there will be dogs in this year's ad? More Star Wars? We'll know soon enough.
>A few hours watching the Discovery Channel can prompt extreme survival fantasies involving frog licking and urine drinking, but what basic skills would you actually need to survive in the wilderness? Here's a look at the basics you need to become an adult Boy Scout straight from a cadre of survival experts. More »
Marketers always dream of the opportunities a bigger budget would afford.
“If I just had $250,000,” we think to ourselves, “then I could REALLY make an impact.” That money may mean the ability to add some new marketing talent to the team, put extra energy into reaching an audience that’s often neglected; maybe even the chance to test out a new social media campaign strategy.
But what if instead of getting that extra $250,000 you were dreaming of, you got something more along the lines of $250 million?
My mind is spinning thinking of all the possibilities that nine digits of budget entails. Talent just went from a kid with 2 years of experience to a full team that includes the likes of Seth Godin and Scott Monty. I’d probably even pay to have Jon Hamm impersonate Don Draper, just for kicks. I could put millions into researching the needs, preferences, locations and decision-making habits of every audience segment and definitively know what levers move them.
Forget about Effies and Clios – my marketing campaigns would be winning Oscars.
So then why is it that political advertising campaigns are so bad?
Rinse and Repeat
Barack Obama is estimated to raise $1 billion to support his bid for reelection this year. Mitt Romney pulled in $10 million dollars in just one day of fundraising last year. Even Herman Cain raised over $14 million in his short-lived run for the Republican nomination. With so much money at their disposal, it really is amazing how bad the final product typically ends up being.
While I’m sure a painstaking amount of work is put into devising political advertising, it seems to be more of an exercise in repetition than creativity. All of that beautiful budget is used to place heavy media buys which make watching TV unbearable. What’s worse is that all the commercials seem like they can be boiled down to one of the following two formulas:
Formula 1: [Insert Opponent Name] + [Black and White Photo/Video of Opponent Making A Weird/Unflattering Face] + [Insert Negative, But Lacking Context, Factoid] + [Quick Flash of a Smiling Photo/Video of Your Candidate]
Formula 2: [Insert Your Candidate Name] + [Color Photo/video of Candidate with Family, Veteran, Blue Collar Worker or Senior Citizen] + [Insert Positive, But Lacking Context, Factoid]
Both have the same end result: mind-numbing advertising that further disenfranchises the American people.
Confined Innovation
In a recent post, Digital Influence Group’s Kevin Green detailed that, all too often, “we limit our thinking to what we know and we’ve experienced.” This is all too true in politics, where it seems that innovation can only take place in the medium used, not the actual message that is spread across that medium.
Go watch a video on YouTube and you’ll likely be bombarded with AdRoll that tells you why Ron Paul is “America’s last true statesman.” Or you may notice that Mitt Romney has some promoted tweets showing up on your feed the next time you visit Twitter. You could even stumble upon Barack Obama’s campaign HQ in the virtual reality world Second Life. Political advertising is at the forefront in terms of leveraging marketing platforms to find and reach their audience…
Just because candidates have huge budgets to work with, it doesn’t mean that the idea needs to be overly complicated.
What if, instead of producing the same old staid advertising and buying media, the candidate used his/her money to do something meaningful? Can you imagine how impactful it would be if Barack Obama announced today that half of the money he raised ($500 million) would be used as a down payment on the national debt to demonstrate his commitment to righting our financial ship? Or if he decided to use that money to fund entrepreneurs’ business ideas to show how dedicated he is to stimulating the economy? Or just donated it to a good cause? And then he used his massive following on social channels to encourage his constituents and supporters to do the same?
In a time where mistrust of politicians is at an all time high, a candidate could fundamentally change the political conversation through a single, strong action like one of those listed above. Think of all the press and conversation that act would garner; the confidence and excitement it would instill in the American people; of how refreshing of a break it would be from politics as we know them.
Do you ever wonder how people react when they see your Twitter updates? Odds are, most would fall under the category of “meh,” according to a new study.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon, MIT and Georgia Tech joined forces to get a sense of how most tweets go over. They created a website called Who Gives a Tweet? that was sort of like a Hot or Not for tweets: Users were promised feedback on their tweets if they agreed to anonymously rate tweets for people they already follow.
Over 19 days in December and January, 1,443 visitors to the site rated 43,738 tweets from 2,014 accounts.
The verdict? Respondents liked 36% of the tweets, disliked 25% and ranked their reaction to the remaining 39% as neutral. “A well-received tweet is not all that common,” Michael Bernstein, a doctoral student at MIT who worked on the project, wrote in a blog post. “A significant amount of content is considered not worth reading, for a variety of reasons.”
Tweets that were part of a semi-private conversation were among the most reviled. Also unpopular: Tweets relating to a mood (“So tired today”) or activity (“Just ate a sandwich.”) On the other hand, sharing information, asking questions of followers and self-promotion, like linking to a story you just wrote (if you’re a journalist) were more likable.
The study’s authors offered a few suggestions for producing better tweets:
1. Don't Tweet Old Links.
Nobody cares about old news. Twitter is best for sharing breaking news.
Activity Ratios are some of the best tools in your arsenal to quantify and improve your business. Here are three quick scenarios how.
“How many calls do I need to hit quota?”
It could be calls, or demos, or any other activity type. A salesperson wants to translate their quota into a number of actions they need to do in a given period of time. The answer: track your activity ratio of X-to-Deal, probably over a trailing 90-day or 12-month range.
In the example to the right, this customer is a staffing firm and has chosen activities specific to their sales funnel: Job Orders, Internal Submissions, Sendouts, Interviews, and finally Placements. The JO:Placement ratio tells them that they need on average 3.7 new job orders to close a deal (placement). In fact this customer’s last five months have been better than average with a ratio in the 2.0 – 3.0 range.
You can also define “intermediate” ratios for activities in the middle of your sales funnel. For example, how many trials does it take to get a demo? As you can see, this customer needs on average 2.0 sendouts to get an interview, and they are getting better (the ratio is trending downwards) over time.
“What do my veterans do differently from my rookies?”
Rookies often take a “shotgun” approach to winning deals: do as much activity as possible, in order to make up for quality through sheer volume. As they become more experienced you often see a shift to a “rifle” approach, doing fewer but higher-quality activities to achieve the same result.
If you break out your ratios by employee, differences in how each employee approaches their sales funnel quickly become clear. Examples to the right:
William Howard Taft is a veteran with 45 deals (placements) won. His overall ratio is 2.6 Job Orders to each Placement. He also needs only 7.2 submissions for each placement — he is a “rifle” shooter.
James Madison is a relative rookie with 15 placements. His overall ratio is significantly worse at 3.5 job orders per placement, and it’s easy to see why. He needs 118 submissions to get each done, more than 16x the effort done by Taft.
These differences help you quantitatively troubleshoot and help your employees improve their process efficiency.
“Why does this client seem so difficult?”
Often a client will be difficult to work with, but it can be hard to put a finger on exactly how they’re different from the norm.
If you break out your ratios by client, differences between them will quickly jump out:
CHS, Computer Sciences, and Arrow Electronics are all relatively minor clients (1-2 placements each) but require 20 – 30 job orders for each win, indicating they are quite difficult to work with. If you look at their Submission to Placement ratio, they also require a lot of submissions — another indicator that they are very picky.
Verizon, Citigroup, Union and Medco are all heavy buyers with 14 – 20 placements each. They’re also much easier to work with, as seen by their 5:1 JO-to-Placement ratio which is 4-6x better than the clients above.
Knowing which clients have a higher bang for the buck will inform your business of where to place its effort and priorities.
Know your ratios, know your business
These activity types will vary by industry and customer. You’ll need to choose the activity types that match your business, and we encourage business to figure out what the most meaningful activities and ratios are. Once you do, ratio analysis can help you more accurately project your sales funnel and improve both your employee as well as client efficiency.
When people watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, they may notice something different about the ads — many of them will be touting a new way to interact with the advertised brands. Shazam, an app that allows people to connect with extra TV content by listening to a few seconds of audio, says it has big plans for Sunday, and IntoNow, a Yahoo-acquired app offering similar capabilities, is announcing a big partnership, too.
Shazam is better-known as an app for identifying music, but it recently brought its technology to TV, where the experience is less about identifying a song and more about creating an easy way for TV shows and advertisers to spur viewers to action. The company has been ramping up its advertising efforts over the past year, and it sounds like the SuperBowl should give those efforts a huge boost — Shazam already announced in January that it signed deals to include Shazam capabilities with nearly one-third of Super Bowl ads.
Now the company says the number has risen to almost half of the ads, and it’s revealing a few key partners: Viewers of the Toyota ad will be able to use Shazam to enter a contest to win two free Camrys. When viewers tag the Cars.com ad, Cars.com will donate $1.00 to one of seven charities. Pepsi’s ad will feature X-Factor winner Melanie Amaro, and using Shazam on the ad will unlock an extra video. Viewers who tag the Teleflora ad will receive a special offer. And not only is Best Buy using Shazam to offer a $50 gift card to customers who buy and activate a mobile phone in 2012 — it’s actually featuring two of Shazam’s founders in its commercial.
Beyond the success of any specific campaign, this year’s Super Bowl will probably serve as an introduction to Shazam’s TV capabilities for many millions of viewers. After all, they’re going to be seeing a Shazam logo, or some other mention of the app, on-screen throughout the day. (Oh, and Shazam users will be able to tag the game and the halftime show, too.)
“There are going to be a hundred-plus million people watching,” says Evan Krauss, Shazam’s executive vice president of advertising sales. “We’re excited for that many people to see it, and for them to see that many commercials in one day.”
IntoNow, meanwhile, hasn’t been as aggressive about signing up advertisers — or at least, in naming them for the press. Instead, it shared plans for one specific campaign Pepsi. After viewers tag the Super Bowl on IntoNow, the app will automatically sync up when the Pepsi MAX commercial airs, giving them an opportunity to enter a contest to receive Pesi MAX for life.
Aside from watching Tom Brady tear it up on the field, the best part of Super Bowl will undoubtedly be the commercials. So far, we’re obsessed with two killer car commercials for Super Bowl XVLI that have already leaked, an Acura ad featuring Jerry Seinfeld and a Ferris Bueller themed Honda CR-V commercial with Matthew Broderick. We just got a sneak peek into yet another ad set to air on Sunday, featuring Boston’s very own Mayor Menino and New York’s Mayor Bloomberg.
Yesterday, Menino and Bloomberg sent out the following tweets:
The mayoral ad is set to premiere Sunday during the most coveted airspace in television, in which most ads cost a hefty $3.5 million for just 30 seconds of on-screen time. The Mayors’ ad promotes Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition, of which Menino and Bloomberg are co-chairs, uniting 600 mayors across the country under the premonition that the Second Amendment is effective only if citizens abide by the laws of gun ownership.
While I support their mission to get illegal guns off the street as much as the next person, I can’t imagine a more boring Super Bowl ad than theirs. The tweeted photos look incredibly awkward, and Menino in a Tom Brady jersey is about the most contradictory thing I’ve ever seen. Honestly, I think I’d rather see a Madonna “wardrobe malfunction” a la 2004 than this commercial.