Subway, Jimmy John’s and Erbert and Gerbert’s Subs and Clubs. Three companies with three degrees of national recognition and three very different marketing approaches to selling pretty similar turkey sandwiches.

Everyone is familiar with Jared, the Subway guy, and his sub diet, thanks to a marketing campaign that has stormed the airwaves for the past few years, most recently including a NFL star athlete fueled by the same ham and turkey combo that Jared chooses. But not every sandwich shop has the advertising budget for national 30-second prime time spots, with celebrities in tow.

Jimmy Johns takes a guerrilla marketing approach, stopping by our office at 3:30 on Thursday afternoon to ask us whether we want a veggie, turkey or ham sample sized sub right as the mid-afternoon dreariness sets in. Easily the most craving inducing campaign as of yet, but does it really seem economical?

Lastly, Erbert and Gerbert’s Subs and Clubs, an emerging sub shop in the Midwest who has turned to social media. One hundred and fifty T-shirts, one admirable iron, 9 hours of standing and one male model produced a YouTube video that is sure to put them on the map. An obsession with flipbooks, the abundant availability of humans and a story of a boy’s hunt for a sandwich is the concept of this viral marketing campaign that a friend recently sent me. Since when does an advertisement for a sandwich get passed around? Since social media came to town.

Again, an instance of Web 2.0 hoisting the little man and his product up above those national brands that we are so tired of watching (sorry, Jared) and those two professional sandwich makers going door to door of office buildings. Instead it is passed around from inbox to inbox with no added charge. What does the little sandwich shop around the corner have to lose?Social media is not only about saving money; there are some pretty high-end videos being passed around out there. More importantly, Ebert and Gerbert have broken through mass media into a realm of effectiveness that only the consumer can decide. Would you rather spend 30 seconds of your day with Jared or a little boy that travels in and out of a t-shirt looking for a sandwich? Social media just might make this franchise spread like a wildfire, or more appropriately, spread like mayonnaise.

Click here to see how the commercial was made.

According to an article in Marketing Daily, a survey of 50 businesses and organizations was conducted in September by Prospero Technologies. Survey questions ranged from what current social media applications were being used, plans and budgets for 2008, ROI, how ROI is measured/assessed, and social media challenges.

The article stated the following results:

• 59% of respondents reported that social media performance in 2007 met or exceeded their marketing objectives, boosting future spending expectations—with 31% planning to spend significantly more on social media applications in 2008.
• 35% reported positive ROI, and 41% said that ROI was “unknown.” Responses to questions about how Web marketers measure ROI reveal that direct sales revenue is not a top measure for determining social media success.
• Total number of site visitors (17%) was the most important criterion for assessing social media performance. Total number of page views and number of subscribers (15%, respectively) were next, followed closely by length of visit on the site (14%).”

Though I’m a little hesitant of this survey from its relatively small sample size, I do feel that it captures the slight confusion that exists of social media and how marketers feel it is measuring up. While 41% of these marketers were confused of the ROI of social media in terms of traditional measurement, the survey found that “the majority of respondents see engagement with their brand as the most important measure of social media success”.

Lets remember that brand building takes time. While many companies have experienced an immediate impact in sales through social media, we are still too early in the age of social media adoption to measure the results of a strengthened brand over time. This effect is likely to be stronger and greater.

In my previous post about the value proposition of social media, I discussed that successful applications give value back to your customer.

In light of this, I stumbled across an article in the Alley Insider that introduced a new Facebook application that I think accomplishes this quite well. The gives a basic overview:

“Long Island City-based music site Amie Street – freshly funded by Amazon – is rolling out a Facebook app that lets you set up a fantasy record label based on its mostly-indie music catalog. Your “label score” goes up and down as songs get more or less popular. The better you do, the more credits you can earn toward mp3 downloads.”

A useful and valuable Facebook app is a rarity these days, but taking a further look at their website (which operates as a social networking site) it is clear that Amie Street understands how to apply value there as well.

In fact, the site articulates this value proposition to both of its niche audiences (emerging artists and music enthusiasts) in the following statements:

“Amie Street gives fans the incentive to discover and purchase your music through our unique pricing model. All songs on Amie Street start free and rise in price up to 98 cents based on the number of times they are bought. The first several downloads of your songs are free because this encourages fans to experiment with your music even if they haven’t heard of you. “

“Amie Street gives fans incentive to spread the word about your music to their friends through our innovative recommendation system. For example, if a fan recommends your song when it’s free, and the price your song rises to 98 cents, we give that fan 98 cents worth of credit to buy more music.”

This is a great example of a company that “gets” the value proposition. I’ll be watching this one to see how it catches on.

Quick post to Triangle-area social media folks: Nathan Gilliat over at Net-Savvy Executive is pulling together business bloggers for dinner on October 15.

It’s at Champa in Brier Creek which, by the way, has killer Pad Thai.

Don’t think I’m going to make it this time (crazy week), but wanted to share the news with other business bloggers… Be sure to RSVP to Nathan if you want to go.

Back in August, we wrote a post about how Wal-mart’s latest social media marketing campaign was inherently flawed. We predicted that it would, once again, blow up in the retail giant’s face. (Note to the folks in Bentonville: Let Edelman focus on the traditional PR. Give us a call on the social media marketing stuff, k?)

Here’s what we said then, in a nutshell: This campaign won’t work because Wal-mart is talking “style” when they are known for “practical.” The campaign should focus on the utility of trying to move to a dorm. Alas, it was too late for them to listen.

But Target, on the other hand, did listen. (Note: Check with legal, Do they owe us royalties?)

As it happens, while Wal-mart was prattling on about something they don’t understand, Target was listening! (See Listening is Social Media Step One on how important that is.) They began to understand the flow of the conversation among incoming freshman. They began to understand the Facebook platform and how conversations occur there. They wisely noted:

“We aren’t there so much to tell a story, but to put on a party, giving the students a platform for social interaction.” Any content provided by a marketer in such a setting “needs to work as social currency. ... Whatever story there is, it’s mostly told by the users, not by the brand.”

Their Facebook page was about dorm room survival. They had practical tips, they had photos, they (gasp) let users upload their own photos in place of the ones they carefully designed first.

They made the marketing very subtle and were rewarded by posts from people saying how much they love Target (See that: brand evangelists doing the marketing work for you, if you (a) deserve it and (b) give them the platform on which to do it.)

Wal-mart, on the other hand, had vicious wall posts slamming their corporate practices, for example.

“Wal-Mart is toxic to communities and livelihoods.”

There’s so much right with what Target did and so much wrong with what Wal-mart did, I could go on for days (maybe I have already), but here’s 5 points to take away from this (different than our earlier 5 Steps to Rolling Out a Social Media Campaign):

1. Listen first. Social media marketing is cocktail party dialogue. When you enter a new group, you listen politely first.
2. Talk on your prospects’ terms. Back to the cocktail party analogy. Incoming freshman were talking about their fear of being properly prepared for dorm life. Wal-mart said, “Let’s talk style!” Target said, “Let’s talk survival.”
3. Understand the value you bring. There are a lot of people who hate Wal-mart. This doesn’t preclude Wal-mart from participating in social media, but they ignore this truth repeatedly and get slammed for it. They don’t understand the value they bring. Target, on the other hand, doesn’t have that baggage, and played their “we’re the place you can get cool, functional stuff pretty cheap” card beautifully.
4. Social media campaigns can cost a fair amount. Target budgeted $500,000 for their campaign. Facebook’s media kit talks about minimum investments of $50,000 per month. People think of social media as “free” and it can be. But you’ve still got to budget for time, at a minimum, and if you want to buy you’re way onto a media platform like Facebook or MySpace, you still need a budget of some kind.
5. ROI measurements are different, and not very evolved. Target had 7,176 members of their group by September 31. That’s great, right. If you calculate a CPM (cost per thousand) relative to members, the CPM is over $69,000. Of course, CPM is more traditionally applied to “impressions” which were no doubt higher. But the point is, the value of over 7,000 people engaging with your brand in a positive way is much, much higher than 7,000 people being exposed to an ad. The ROI calculations, however, are still being fleshed out.

Kudos to Target for getting it. That will pay dividends now and in the future.

Oh, and their campaign started July. I guess they don’t owe us royalties… Dang…

North Carolina’s first social media agency, Ignite Social Media, announced today the hiring of Lisa McNeill as Social Media Strategist.

“We’re happy to have Lisa on the team,” said Jim Tobin, company founder and president. “We brought Lisa on during the soft launch period and she’s proven herself a prolific worker and someone who really gets what social media marketing is all about.”

Lisa brings a background in advertising and marketing to her role. She’s experienced in working on local, regional and national accounts. As a social media strategist, Lisa will outline social media tactics and develop social media campaigns to help companies reach customers and build brand advocates. Her expertise in project management and marketing will additionally guide the execution of these campaigns.

Lisa graduated from Appalachian State University Magnum Cum Laude, earning a Bachelor in Science, Communications Degree.

When I think social media, words like knowledge – people – conversation – share – inform come to mind, not format – standardization – template – branded. The idea behind a Social Media Press Release (SMPR) template is flawed, why put yourself, your company, your product in the box right from the start?

The most well known one is Shift Communication’s SMPR template, there is also a SMPR Creation Tool based on Shift’s template. The template is 100% open, with no copyright and they do say “We hope it can serve as a helpful guide to kickstart thinking about how we can evolve the PR sector. Maybe it can serve as a talking points memo to show to clients, to convince them to give it a try?” When I take a look at it in action here and here – it makes my point which Brian Oberkirch states perfectly, “We should start by using established & emerging Web standards that impact the structure of our information and not the fake formatting of these templates.”

The importances of a press release is to be heard, shared and to start a conversation – this needs more than words, photos and links. Let’s look at semantic metadata, which provided rich, structured data and allows that data to be used in Web 2.0 applications (mash-ups, etc..) and Social Media integration and searches. The metadata makes the SMPR easier for a person to track, parse and reuse.

One of the upcoming semantic metadata formats for SMPR is hRelease. hRelease is an open, social media news release standard that encourages the electronic distribution of news across the Internet. hRelease will allow news authors to create a single copy of their online release and share it electronically with wire services, members of the press, and the public. The goal of the hRelease format is to enable a simple way to markup news, allowing authors to share news through blogs, personal and corporate websites, web feeds, and any other online repository.

Be different and creative, design the SMPR based on your company, product and/or service and use the current or emerging web standards, not a template. Utilize an open social media news service like hRelease to share and engage your audience with the release. These differences will bring ‘conversation’ and the semantic metadata will allow everyone to use it, reuse it, track it, share it – and that’s what Social Media is all about.

This morning I found an excellent post written by Karl Long over at ExperienceCurve discussing his ideas on co-creative marketing, a concept he feels is similiar to viral marketing but as he put it “more holistic”, as it builds value over time through user contributions.

Truthfully it is hard if not impossible to pinpoint what causes something to “go viral”, or causes something to go one step further as co-creative – but we do learn a lot from breaking down some of the key components of these campaigns. In Karl’s post he does a great job outlining what he believes to be the three components of co-creative marketing: Shareable, Mashable, and Hackable.

He goes into great depth describing each of these in his article so I’ll let you read it for yourselves- but I do think it causes some questions to arise that regardless of whether you are executing a social media campaign currently or not – we all need to consider.

1. Does your website have RSS feeds? Why not?

2. Do you have valuable industry information that you are hoarding? Why aren’t you sharing with customers or prospects?

3. How are customers bringing added value to your product? Are they customizing? Are they using your products in new ways? If so, what are you doing to share this to other customers and prospects?

These are just a few of the many considerations that come to my mind, but the basic consensus is this – are you sharing? Are you making it easier to spread your message?

As always, let me know if you have anything else to add or revise.

With the buzz of social media, I’ve seen companies post their 30 second TV spot on YouTube and call it a social media campaign. Working for a social media agency, I’ve called many out on it.

Now – I’m noticing another similiar trend. It’s a trend that says that Facebook = social media success. And with this notion, companies are saying, “Heck, let’s start a facebook group!” or, “lets post some banner ads that are demographically targeted!”.

I guess I understand the appeal. Facebook is relatively inexpensive, it reaches a particular demographic, and it’s customers interact with it daily. But unless you’ve got a brand that your customers tattoo on themselves, I’m a little skeptical of these types of approaches. Yes, you may get customers to join your group – but what does that mean anymore? Are your customers interacting with your brand? Are they suggesting it to their friends and family? It’s hard to tell.

In an article by The Sideroad, Jill Konrath discusses that a businesses’ value proposition should be a , “clear statement of the tangible results a customer gets from using your products or services. The more specific your value proposition is, the better.”

This same value proposition should be applied to every social media campaign and tactic. In fact, every tactic should provide some value back to your customer. Below is a list of questions I suggest you ask to yourself to keep yourself in check:

1. Why? What are your goals and objectives? 2. What need or want does this tactic fulfill for your customer? 3. What level of interaction and what frequency will your customer have with this tool? 4. What outcome might your customer take to bring the value back to your company?

As you may notice, the most important question to ask in all of this is , “Why?”. If your answer is “Just to do it” or because “everybody else is” – you are already subject to an unsuccessful campaign, or perhaps another Facebook group. If, however, you have a unique value proposition – you could have a social media application that provides value to both you and your customer.

Look at this picture (found on the BrandInfection blog). If you’re Microsoft, or Dell, this should terrify you.

But it also made me wonder, since social media marketing is part content creation (podcasts, vlogs, etc.), when these folks all graduate and come to work for social media agencies like mine, or get jobs as social media specialists at corporations, do you think Apple’s teeny-tiny market share will finally take off??