Disney Celebrates 100 Million Facebook Fans

From Mashable:

The Walt Disney Company hit a major marketing milestone at around 8 p.m. PT Saturday night: 100 million Facebook “Likes” across its more than 200 official brand, property and character Pages.

The company began posting regularly to Facebook in August 2009 and managed to gather 60 million “Likes” across its Facebook properties in the first year. Those properties now attract about 5 million new fans per week, most of whom receive regular news about the company or one of its creations through their News Feeds.

To celebrate the news, which is scheduled to hit the wire in time for Walt Disney’s 109th birthday on Monday, the company put together the video above, which highlights the history of the company’s involvement on Facebook. It also reveals a few interesting facts about its fans, such as that more than 70% of fans are female, and more than 60% live outside the U.S.

6 Reasons Why Social Games Are the Next Advertising Frontier

From Mashable:

Ad spending on social gaming increased 60% since 2009, according to eMarketer. No doubt advertisers have noticed that 56 million Americans are playing social games and that the branded virtual goods market is booming. But more than just social gaming’s growing popularity has gotten attention from advertisers. Social games also represent an environment that is largely conducive to advertising.

“Media buyers and advertisers are recognizing that this is what they want,” explained Robert Tomkinson, Playfish’s senior director of global marketing. “What they want is massive reach, they want targeting, they want performance. And you can have all of these by forming branding opportunities in the right way.”

Tomkinson and other leaders in the social gaming industry recently spoke at the Social Gaming Summit about the huge opportunity that social games represent for brands. Here are five reasons they gave for why social game advertising is a growing success:

1. Advertising in Games Is About Engagement, Not Eyeballs

Back in July players of the the most popular Facebook social game, FarmVille, had for the first time an option to plant a specific branded crop — Cascadian Farm blueberries — on their virtual farms. In more than 500 million cases, players chose to purchase and plant the branded blueberries instead of something else. According to Zynga, unaided brand awareness increased 550% as a result.

Volvo, H&M and MTV Networks have also experimented with branded virtual goods that users can choose to purchase or acquire through interaction with the brand.

Another common strategy for brands in social games is an “offer wall” inside of many games. Brands can exchange virtual rewards for engagement, like taking a survey or watching a video about a new product.

“In both cases you’re actually engaging with the brand,” explained Peter Wexler, the director of strategic partnerships for transactional advertising platform TrialPay. “This is different than in traditional ads within TV and print and on the side of the bus that flies by on Eighth Avenue. That’s all sort of eyeballs, so how many eyeballs do I have on a magazine, on a paper… you can vary on actual engagement.”

2. Social Games Reach the Facebook Audience

When online, the average American spends more time on Facebook than on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft, Wikipedia and Amazon combined. A significant part of that interaction includes social games, making them an ideal alternative to display ads for advertisers who want to reach Facebook’s giant, 500 million-person user base.

“If you talk to advertisers, and you talk to them about Facebook, every single one of them, whether it’s an agency or the brand, they’re all extremely interested in participating in the Facebook platform,” explained Wexler during his presentation. “And most of them are pretty unsure of how to effectively do that… this is where consumers are available.”

3. Some Games Have Bigger Audiences Than Prime Time TV

Advertising in social games might not be solely about eyeballs, but there are definitely a critical mass of people who are playing them. About about 30 million players per day play the most popular social game, FarmVille. The most popular prime time television show last week, Dancing With the Stars, had about 24 million viewers.

Social gaming is becoming just as accessible, if not more accessible, than television. While most gaming platforms in the past have required expensive consoles and other barriers to entry, most social games are free to play.

“[The] iPhone put a gaming device in everybody’s pocket and massively expanded the market,” explained Tomkinson during his presentation. “And of course, free-to-play social games massively expand the market to bigger than all the console games combined. This is something that anybody can use.”

In addition to broaching television’s audience size, social games are also broadening the niche that is often associated with gaming. Most games are fairly easy to learn. Zynga game tutorials, for instances, are shorter than three minutes.

Zynga’s director of brand advertising Manny Anekal said in a presentation that he hates the term “social games” because the experiences that his company creates are “just fun with your family friends. Simple as that.” Being such, social games can easily reach demographics far beyond the typical “gamer” profile.

4. Advertising With Social Games Isn’t Restricted to Virtual

The branding potentials for social games need not remain online. About six months ago, 7-Eleven straddled the space between virtual and physical worlds by tying products like iced coffee and slurpees with FarmVille Games. When a customer bought a promoted product, he or she was directed to perform a task in the game to unlock a 7-Eleven virtual good.

The campaign ran in 7,000 stores for six weeks. The branded ice cream surpassed the brand’s sales forecast within the first week. More than 3 million codes were redeemed, and water had a 60% redemption rate.

Green Giant also explored the space in between virtual games and the physical world by giving away FarmVille Cash with select produce purchases.

5. Brands Can Be Part of the Experience

In “virtual world” games, brands can do more than hang out on billboards (though that is an option, too). They can become part of the game.

One way brands have done this is to add an element to the gameplay itself. When Farmers Insurance branded a blimp in the FarmVille game, for instance, players who chose to put it on their farms had their crops protected during the 10 days of the promotion. The branded blimp continued to float over their farms even after the promotion was over.

Another way brands become part of the experience is by adding an interactive component to the landscape. On Black Friday, Old Navy launched a virtual store in CrowdStar’s social game, It Girl. Players could purchase Old Navy virtual clothing or gift it to their friends. The virtual store displayed real-world offers, and players could also complete quests that would earn them virtual currency.

“They’ve very much integrated their brand into the game experience,” Wexler said about the integration. “It’s not so much about transactions and direct revenue for Old Navy in this situation, it’s about putting the brand in front of their customer base.”

6. Brands Can Reward Players for Interacting With Them

Purchasing the Farmers Insurance blimp gave FarmVille players protection, completing quests in the virtual Old Navy store gives CrowdStar players virtual currency, and watching videos or taking surveys on offer walls will earn virtual currency or goods. In some cases, players can choose between paying to play or engaging with a brand in order to play a game for free.

“The player gets the reward by interacting with the brand. This isn’t about showcasing, it’s about engagement,” Wexler explained during his presentation. “And that’s the value to advertisers.”

What do brands of the future look like?

From Simply Zesty:

There’s no doubt that social media is changing and evolving rapidly – and brands are constantly exploring new ways to make social media work for them. At the moment we’re still in the learning phase and we’re seeing lots of brands making some (very public) mistakes, as we test the boundaries of social technologies for consumer interaction. Mistakes are fine, and expected, so long as we learn from them. So what will brands of the future look like from the realms of social media, and much should you let it affect your brand?

Accept that the 9-5 is dead

The use of social media in the workplace is a pretty touchy subject. While some companies may actively encourage, others go the complete other end of the spectrum and block access to the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Just like the brands of the future, employees of the future will be social too. The trick for organisations is to find out how this can be used to benefit the business. The internal structure of future brands will not look how it looks now, and the flexibility of social technologies has a lot to do with this. At Simply Zesty we may not be a typical example as our business is in social media, but I’ve lost count of the number of times that a staff member of ours will pass on a link or a case study through Twitter or Facebook, at 11:00 at night, or at the weekend. They do this because everyone is encouraged to be social. And we know that the normal office hours don’t apply. The 9-5 is officially dead. For an excellent discussion on this, I recommend you check out this TEDX talk by Jason Fried.

Branding will be alive

This may be harder to contemplate, but more and more we’re seeing a company’s brand be interepreted by the millions, as we all become producers of content and add our own interpretation onto a company’s brand and messaging. Static branding will be a thing of the past and company logos, advertising and messaging will be constantly moving, adapting to people’s needs. I think the static company logo will be unrecognisable in 50 years time and the idea of a corporation as an unmoving entity will be hard to get our heads around. We’re just at the tip of the iceberg with things like companies crowdsourcing their logos and this trend will only get bigger. Brands will find a way to fit around what we want them to be, rather than the other way around.

Will translate social actions into concrete actions

Malcom Gladwell recently wrote an article, where he questioned the ability for social media to encourage real action. So is it just a place for all talk, or can companies find a way to encourage interaction from users that translates into a tangible business benefit? Awareness is one thing, but sales is quite another. The challenge for brands now, and brands of the future, is to adapt their business model to fit social. You’re less likely to be able to take a consumer from Facebook to the checkout, but if you invest in social transactions such as group buying, you’ll start seeing a lot more sales. Again, we’re seeing mistakes as companies attempt to encourage transactions in the wrong way but there are also some great case studies to learn from.

Look for innovation outside the boardroom

They get their fair amount of ctricism, but there’s lots of lessons that can be learned from Coca Cola as a social brand. They did what is incredibly difficult for any brand to do, especially a multinational as themselves, and that was to work with an ‘unofficial’ community and find a way to successfully integrate them into the business. Coca Cola’s Facebook page wasn’t set up by the organisation themselves, but by two uber-fans. They could have done what many others did before them and shut the page down before setting up their own one from scratch. But instead they realised the huge power this group already had, and decided to work with the founders and keep them on as community managers for the page. This is a brave thing for a brand to do, given that when they did this social media was still a relatively new concept for many businesses. Don’t underestimate how important it is to work with a community and not against them.

Won’t have chairs in the meeting room

With the increasing mainstream adoption of online collaboration tools, brands of the future will not have a traditional meeting room, or the need to call meetings at all. Everything will eventually move online, making companies more efficient, adapting their communication to get the message out as quickly as possible. Companies will be less likely to call meetings, but when they do, there will likely be no chairs in the room. Screens will connect everyone over skype etc.. as you hook up with colleagues remotely. Hopefully the meeting room will die out altogether eventually, but that may be too tough to call yet..

3 Hot Facebook App Ideas from Pancake Puppies

From Social Times:

While there are many great new Facebook application tools to make your Page stand out, successful promotions with clear objectives that stick to the basics don’t always need bells and whistles. Then again, white chocolate chips can’t hurt.

Denny’s current Facebook greeting card/coupon promotion is a custom Facebook application from Filter Creative Group. The app focuses on social media’s primary marketing objective — converting customers into brand advocates who influence their real-world and network friends.

The app allows Facebook users to create a customized holiday greeting card, with both the sender and recipient eligible for a coupon for free Pancake Puppies. Having used this type of promotion for Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day, Denny’s and Filter Creative Group evaluated how fans used previous iterations to tune this version.

Three “best practices” jump out:

1. The Facebook Like button is not the only means for sharing

This application does not require the user to Like Denny’s and allows the card and coupon to be easily shared. Senders can choose to send the card and coupon by Facebook, by downloading to send via e-mail and — get this — by printing to send by snail mail or deliver personally. Though Facebook is the platform by which someone participates in the promotion, it’s structured to allow sharing with all friends, regardless of whether they are on Facebook and using a preferred delivery method.

A small point of “friction” in the process is sending by e-mail, which could benefit from being able to send the card and coupon directly from the app.

2. Reduce roadblocks

The terms of service are provided as a link, rather than as a tome that must be viewed oran endless appendage to one of the app’s pages. The app does request permission to access the user’s Facebook information — so that it the card can be easily customized — in a less onerous degree than many other apps. (Wouldn’t it be great if Facebook allowed apps one-time access to only the specific information it needed for execution?)

The app does not pop-up a dialog box requesting a Wall post. And the coupon has no “jump through hoops” requirements for use, just a two dollar purchase during the promotion period.

3. Make it easy

The application is about as simple to use as can be for non-technical Facebook fans. If Grandpa gets a coupon, it is likely he will have little difficulty using the app to gift his friends. That there is both “Gift Cards” and “Card Maker” tabs on Denny’s Facebook Page could be a little confusing.

As Alan Miller, FILTER Creative Group CEO, puts it, “The Holiday Card Maker is a great way to reward the community while giving them a tool they can use.”

Denny’s has under 100,000 fans — relatively few considering it has 1500 restaurants. Forcing Likes and Wall posts could increase that number, but could also alienate fans and reduce their motivation to visit the page. This is a conundrum for all brands, though a smaller number of actively engaged fans versus a large number of passive fans can be a very successful social media marketing strategy.

Shoutlet Lands $6 Million For Social Media Management Platform

From TechCrunch:

Shoutlet, provider of a social media management platform, this morning announced it has raised $6 million in Series B funding.

The investment was led by (customer) American Family Insurance, and adds to $3.2 million in previous funding.

The startup’s original backers, Origin Ventures and Leo Capital Holdings, both participated in the new round.

Shoutlet’s centralized platform boasts Facebook and Twitter management, Social CRM, and widget building capabilities for companies to leverage promotions, coupons and sweepstakes and streamline social media outreach through a single interface.

Additionally, the platform enables mobile marketing, social commerce and real-time campaign analytics.

Vodafone’s Power Pinata Facebook Challenge

From Digital Buzz:





Last week I was sent a seriously weird package from the guys at Host in Sydney, inside was a wrestling mask complete with an attached cape and a note asking if i’d ever seen a robot smash a piñata with a baseball bat! Unfortunately I’d not been so lucky, so I accepted the invitation to go on a mysterious trip this week, complete with my crazy mask.

So it was a slight relief to discover the Facebook app and social campaign they are running for Vodafone Australia. Called “Power Pinata” the campaign is centered around a robot with a baseball bat, hidden away in a secret warehouse, ready to smash a Vodafone piñata that will instantly release 500 pretty cool prizes to the Facebook community, on a first come first serve basis.

What I love about digital right now, is the potential for online to create real world outcomes, and with the Vodafone Facebook app, you’ll be able to jump in the cue and control the robots next swing of the bat in real time through the app. The robot does look a little familiar though, perhaps he or she is the retired robot from the Halo Reach Monument campaign!

How To Compress Your Video For YouTube, Vimeo and Other Video Sites

From Social Times:

Have you ever spent hours and hours working on and perfecting a video only to discover that it looks terrible once you upload it to YouTube, Vimeo or other online video sites? If so, you have suffered from bad compression. Read on for some compression tips, and a video, that can help you to upload great looking video to the web every time.

Before we get into how to compress your videos for maximum picture quality on the web, let’s talk about what video compression is, exactly. Wikipedia defines video compression as “reducing the quality of data used to represent digital video images.” However, let’s try to understand compression in layman’s terms. Basically, when you create a video in the video editor of your choice and export it at full quality you are likely to get a pretty large file. Depending on the length of your video, your file could be several GB, which is pretty darn big.

While you can upload videos to YouTube that are up to 2 GB in size it takes a long time. Aside from taking time, if you haven’t compressed a video then YouTube compresses it for you and (no offense YouTube!) the final quality is often much less desirable than if you had compressed it yourself.

Earlier this week a Howcast video about how to compress your videos for the web went up on the YouTube blog. In the video, ‘Professor Compressor’ teaches you the basics of how to compress and upload a great looking video for the web. Professor Compressor does a great job of explaining how video compression works and how to trouble shoot when your video looks less than appealing. Check it out below, and then read on to find out about the compression settings that I like to use when exporting my own videos for upload to YouTube, Vimeo and other sites online.

I always find it easiest when I’ve got an outline of exactly what settings I should use when exporting a video for the web from After Effects, Final Cut, iMovie or whatever program I happen to be using. Following are the settings that I use most frequently when exporting video. These settings can be found when exporting or rendering your video in whichever video editor you are using.

File Format: MP4 (this is the type of file that will result, i.e. yourfile.mp4)

In the video settings choose the following specifications:

Video Format: H.264 (this is the compression type)

Data Rate: Choose a number between 8000 and 10000, Optimized for: Streaming

Image Size: If you want to export HD, choose 1280×720 HD; otherwise, choose whichever size you have been working with (usually I choose 640×480)

Frame Rate: 24

Keyframe: Every 24 frames

In H.264 video options, choose the following (if you have the option):

Restrict profile(s) to: Main

Encoding mode: Best Quality (multi-pass)

In the audio settings choose the following specifications:

Format: AAC-LC (music)

Data Rate: 320kbps

Channels: Stereo

Output sample rate: 48.000 kHz

Encoding quality: Best

Of course, everyone has their own formula that works best for them when exporting and compressing video for the web. As you compress your own videos you will be able to fine tune your compression settings to get the perfect combination for your needs. What compression settings do you use when you export video? Feel free to share them with us in the comments!