This post was originally published in Campaign UK as part of the monthly Connected Campaign series. The series features analysis on social marketing initiatives and commentary from industry experts. In this month’s post, British Airways gears up for the Olympics.
Campaign: Home advantage
Agencies: Bartle Bogle Hegarty, ZenithOptimedia, The 12th Floor
Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
Other media: TV, press (including Metro coverwrap)
In February, British Airways used advertising to hero the BA team and show they are ready to welcome the world to London for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Now, as the official airline partner of London 2012, it is using social media platforms to promote its involvement and build profile in the run-up to the Games.
The Aim
According to Keir Mather, the strategic business lead and partner at Bartle Bogle Hegarty, the creative brief was: "What can we do to show our support for Team GB?"
"Home advantage" is a cry for Britain to stay at home during the Games to support the national team. Counter-intuitively, Britain's national airline is telling Britain not to fly.
"We hope that this Olympics, by admitting in a tongue-in-cheek way that the fortune of the British team is more important than simply buying BA's product, we will be seen as genuinely contributing to the performance of the British team," Mather adds.
The Execution
A series of high-profile TV spots were launched during Euro 2012 to "build conversation" and, with the British Olympic Association's backing, BA persuaded members of Team GB and ParalympicsGB to share the ad - so a lot of people heard about it first from the athletes.
It seeded the campaign exclusively on Facebook, allowing people to customise the TV ad by entering their postcode and, using the Google Street View Image API, watch a version of the film with the plane taking a detour down the street where they live. There were more than one million plays of the video in the first two weeks.
To maximise awareness of the campaign, BA posted a mixture of video and images on its Facebook page, which it then amplified to a wider audience using Facebook Premium Ads and Sponsored Stories. These appeared on the right-hand column of people's home pages and in their news feed, offering the opportunity to like, comment and share the content.
In addition, using a relatively new ad unit on Facebook, BA embedded the video ad in the platform's Logout Experience, giving people the opportunity to view the video at a time when they are actively seeking new content.
"I love this. It is confident, upbeat and I can't help but sing along to The Clash's London Calling.
"The campaign is well-integrated across all media, with an emphasis on social. So who better to partner with exclusively than Facebook?
"It was a great use of sponsorship of the Games to get athletes to use their Twitter feeds to launch the Facebook campaign. I'm a sucker for personalisation done well in advertising, so I think the Google Street View part is nicely integrated. My kids adored seeing their home pop into the execution.
"At the end of the film, I was left waiting for some further interaction. Perhaps I'll have to wait for something in the post since they now have my postcode!"
Media: Dan Clays, managing director, OMD
"How do you take advantage of Olympic partner status when your business thrives on people leaving the country? BA's answer is to be counter-intuitive and suggest people don't fly.
"Win the long-term hearts and minds of the country by putting the hopes of our athletes before those of the airline. The result is a TV ad that is light-hearted and memorable - an ideal combination for building conversation on social platforms.
"Persuading Olympic and Paralympic talent to Tweet about the ad and mention on their Facebook pages is a smart move to get the ball rolling. Building in Google Street View to enable people to personalise the ad cleverly increases the chances of content being shared. Thinkbox, Facebook and Twitter will be thanking BA and its agencies for this case study."
Client: Pete Markey, chief marketing officer, RSA
"It's a busy time for Olympic sponsors. With multimillion-pound investments, they are working hard to link themselves more closely with the Olympics and convince consumers they have a relevant role as sponsors.
"BA's social media-linked campaign is a smart way to show the relevance of its sponsorship with a tailored local video and content designed to get consumers to feel more involved.
"BA broadly pulls this off - engaging content closely tied to the celebration of the Games and the value of home-team support.
"Where it falls over, though, is engagement beyond a clever use of video and the chance to write on the BA Facebook wall - clearly more work to do if this is going to be a really engaging and relevant campaign success."
Campaign: Jeremy Lee, associate editor, Campaign
"It's a truism, but the key to successful sponsorship is for brands to get integrated into the spirit of an event, not simply slap a logo on.
"In this social age, if you are superficial about sponsorship, you get exposed - and if you are superficial about social, the consequences can be even worse.
"BA realises this and fair play to it for doing something different and tongue-in-cheek. In encouraging Britons to get behind Team GB, it's encouraging them to stay at home. I guess 'To fly. To serve' still works, but only when Andy Murray takes the tennis gold.
"I like it - it's bringing the TV ad to life by making it appear like a jumbo jet has landed on your street. Fun, unless you live in Hounslow under the Terminal 5 flight path, I suppose."
Facebook Premium is the most impactful way for marketers to distribute their content on Facebook. Advertisers can now buy Premium inventory through their API partners and agencies, and via the Power Editor. In addition to being able to get a Premium campaign trafficked by a Facebook representative, clients and agencies will now have the convenience of doing so online, on a self-serve basis.
These changes make buying Premium faster and more convenient for advertisers wishing to run their own campaigns. Clients and agencies interested in applying their own optimization and trafficking skills to Premium inventory will now be able to do so. Additionally, agencies will now be able to help clients with the media planning of Premium campaigns.
Please contact your Facebook representative to get started. You can reach Facebook Sales via this form. The Preferred Marketing Developer directory can be found here.
This report complements the previous Power of Like study, conducted in the US in May 2011, and Power of Like 2, published in June 2012. These reports highlighted that fans and their friends are businesses’ most valuable customers, and that marketing to them using a combination of paid and earned media on Facebook increases their brand engagement and likelihood to purchase.
The latest paper includes compelling results from retail brands in the UK (Asos and Topshop), France (La Redoute and Zara), and Germany (H&M and Zara).
Some key findings:
In Germany, the reach of the Zara site rose from 1% among the total internet population to over 12% among fans exposed to brand messages
In the UK, ASOS fans were 3.6x as likely to visit the ASOS website than non-fans, and friends of fans were 2.7x as likely to visit the site
ASOS site visitors who are a fan or friend of fan are over 10% more likely to make a purchase on the ASOS site, compared to site visitors outside ASOS’s friend of fan reach
Facebook advertising generated a 130% uplift (compared to a control group) in purchase behavior on the ASOS website in the four weeks following ad exposure
The findings demonstrate Facebook is an important driver of sales through greater brand engagement and exposure. Using paid and earned Facebook media together, brands can leverage the value of their fans and friends of fans to drive meaningful business impact.
Brad Smallwood is head of measurement and insights at Facebook. At the ARF conference earlier this month, he offered a challenge to the measurement industry: How can we as an industry tie social marketing back to business metrics in ways that allow for cross-platform comparability? Read more and learn how to submit your proposal below.
Social measurement depends on being able to tie social activities back to the business results you are trying to achieve – be it reach, brand impact, or sales. Understanding what you are getting from your marketing spend also depends on being able to compare impact across platforms – TV, online display, social, etc. – and across publishers.
As I discussed at the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) Audience Measurement 7.0 conference, marketing platforms have advanced exponentially, but measurement methodologies have not kept pace. Most measurement tools and techniques are constrained to certain publishers or single media channels, instead of measuring across them all. It is time for the industry to evolve.
Just as other industries have been transformed by creating open systems that multiple parties can plug into, measurement can benefit from a platform approach. There is not a single measurement company in the world that has a truly 360-degree view of the consumer, not a single one that understands all elements of ad effectiveness or the path to purchase. By creating research platforms with which multiple research companies, data providers and publishers can integrate, we can create a more holistic view of how advertising works.
We believe the solution must come from third party, independent measurement companies who are able to look across platforms for innovative solutions. One example of this type of solution is Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings, which combines Nielsen’s consumer panel assets with demographic data from online publishers.
But there is more work to be done – particularly when it comes to ad effectiveness. Other platform ideas must emerge for the measurement industry to advance as a whole - platform ideas that truly allow for multiple research companies and publishers to participate, integrate and benefit.
Facebook and ARF have issued a challenge to the measurement community: We want to hear your innovative ideas for tying social marketing back to business metrics in ways that allow for cross-platform comparability around the world. Facebook and ARF will review the ideas and contact those with the highest potential. Facebook will consider providing funding, access to data assets and collaboration on pilot studies.
If you represent a measurement, research or analytics company, or research practitioner and have an idea, please click here to complete the submission form. We look forward to hearing from you and moving the industry forward together.
Brad Smallwood is head of measurement and insights at Facebook. The deadline for submissions has been extended to August 3, 2012, and finalists will be contacted by September 7, 2012. Additional information can be found in the submission form.
This post was originally published in the Huffington Post as part of The Stream Series, a selection of observations from the WPP Digital un-conference, Stream. Paul Adams, Global Head of Brand Design at Facebook, offers some reflections on the day.
Towards a world of exponentially increasing information, embedded in everything, filtered by our friends
Last week at Cannes Lions I had the honor of participating in Stream, a fantastic event run by WPP. Some of the brightest minds in the creative industry shared their perspectives on things they were passionate about. It was interesting to see a common theme emerge from multiple speakers--namely that all manner of physical products will be embedded with digital technology and it will change how we interact with the world around us. The themes I spoke about were similar.
Thanks to the invention of the web and development of mobile technologies, we are witnessing an exponential increase in accessible information. Because many of us now have the web in our pocket, always turned on, we have the opportunity to share more of our lives with more and more people.
We see people choosing to publish more on a variety of services. We share what we're doing, what we're thinking, where we are, where we're going, what songs we're listening to, our photos, our favorite things ... the list goes on. This is helping people stay in touch with the people they care about the most, and helping them tell the stories of their lives.
We're also sharing what we know. Most of us remember having a set of 24 encyclopedias in our house growing up (There'd never be enough information for Q and X to fill entire books!). As a 10 year old, I remember looking at them and thinking that most of the world's information was inside those books. Now we have Wikipedia. If you tried to print Wikipedia, the number of books would be in the many thousands. On average, we're adding 1,000 new articles to Wikipedia every single day -- that doesn't include all the updates to existing articles.
Between sharing the details of our lives, and our knowledge and opinions on a range of topics, the volume of information we're collectively creating, publishing and recording is incomprehensible. And it's only increasing.
In a world of exponentially increasing information, people need ways to navigate the volume. The way we navigate this new world is, interestingly, the same way we have navigated the world since the beginning of humanity -- we are turning to our friends.
Sharing critical information with the people around us helped our species survive--where to plant food, what animals to eat, where to get supplies, what merchants to trust. We are simply hard wired to ask our friends for advice.
It's also no surprise that as we build out a map of humanity online, people using their authentic identities, connecting with their real friends, and sharing content they genuinely care about, we're seeing a fundamental shift in the structure of the web. We're moving away from a web built around content, to a web built around people. One of the most common questions I get is "Paul, help me understand this social thing." I usually say, "Go home and chat with your friends and family!"
My point is that social is not new. Social networks have existed for as long as our species has. The web is only 20 years old and as a new media technology, it's relatively young. We're social animals and it was natural for the web to evolve and reflect that.
In the foreseeable future, we will be able to know just about everything on just about any topic, and thanks to the rise of mobile technology, this information will be available to us at any time. When this happens, the sheer volume is necessarily more than any single person can digest.
In order to manage a new world of vast amounts of content we will turn to the people we know and the sources we trust to help us filter and understand it. We will be able to know things like what products and businesses our friends prefer, how businesses interact with people we care about, and how much other people paid for goods. This will have a profound impact in businesses, large and small, which will now be more connected to their customers and to the world.
And just like they always have, our friends will be one of the largest influences on our purchase decisions and behavior.
If you missed Paul at Stream last week, you'll find his recent talk at Facebook Studio Live here.
People often ask us what types of content and creative are the most compelling. Join us on Thursday, June 28th at 10am PT (1pm ET, 5pm UTC/GMT) as we discuss the results of two studies that explore the drivers of effective ad creative and the best way to generate engagement with Page posts.
Guest Speaker: Sean Bruich, Monetization Analytics
Time: Thursday, June 28th at 11am PT (1pm ET, 5pm GMT)
The initial comScore paper, The Power of a Like, highlighted that fans and their friends tend to be businesses’ highest-value customers, giving businesses a great opportunity to communicate with these top customers in an ongoing way. It showed that relative to the average Internet user, fans are also heavy users of a brand’s products and marketing properties:
Bing fans conduct 58% more searches on Bing and friends of fans conduct 27% more searches
Southwest fans visit the Southwest website 5x more and friends of fans visit 2.5x more
In Power of a Like 2, comScore re-confirmed that fans and their friends are brands’ most valuable customers:
Best Buy fans spend 131% more in Best Buy stores and online
Target fans spend 97% more
Amazon fans visit the site 5x more
But it also uncovered that marketing to fans and their friends on Facebook increases their purchase behavior. When looking at the impact of brand messages reaching fans and friends of fans, the study found that relative to a control group, in the four weeks after seeing brand messages on Facebook:
Starbucks fans and their friends overall bought at Starbucks 38% more frequently
Target fans and their friends overall bought at Target 21% more frequently
Finally, the study also looked at the impact of reaching fans and friends of fans with ads and sponsored stories from the brand. The study found that relative to a control group, in the four weeks after seeing ads on Facebook:
Fans and friends of fans of a major offline retailer bought 16% more frequently in store, and 56% more frequently online
The study demonstrates that while fans are high-value customers, you can increase their value further by making sure they see your messages with ads and sponsored stories.
Two announcements from Cannes this week underscore how vital the agency community is to what’s possible on Facebook.
First, we’re pleased to announce the inaugural Facebook Creative Council, which will convene for the first time this week in Cannes. A counterpart to the Client Council announced last year, the Creative Council will serve as a sounding board for identifying top priorities for agency creatives in areas like product, measurement and programs. Members of the inaugural council include a cross-section of creative leaders including: Jeff Benjamin (JWT), Colleen DeCourcy (Socialistic), David Droga (Droga5), Rob Feakins (Publicis), Toshiya Fukuda (777), James Hilton (AKQA), Linus Karlsson (McCann), Amir Kassaei (DDB), Nick Law (R/GA), Mike Lazerow (Buddy Media), Tor Myhren (Grey), Rob Reilly (CPB), Mark Tutssel (Leo Burnett) and Mark Waites (Mother).
Also announced this week, Facebook Studio Edge is a social learning and recognition program that keeps agencies up to date on the latest Facebook’s platform has to offer. Facebook Studio Edge is modular, with 10-15 minute self-guided courses that are focused on a topic such as apps, Pages and ads. Each course is interactive and new courses are updated as needed, so that participants are always up to date on the latest in Facebook marketing best practices. Individuals earn recognition badges as they progress through the modules, and, since it’s built on Facebook Studio, people can now display their Facebook Studio Edge badges alongside the individual case study submissions they have been credited with on the site. Together with the Facebook Studio Awards, these new developments create a powerful platform for individuals from agencies of all disciplines and sizes to show off their expertise in Facebook marketing.
Mark D’Arcy, Facebook’s Global Director of Creative Solutions, made the announcements: “The more Facebook can listen to the agency community and arm them with more information on the latest our platform has to offer, the more creativity we will see come to Facebook.”
Currently, Facebook Studio Edge is open to a limited number of launch partners. Information on expanded availability will be posted here on the Facebook Studio blog over the coming weeks— please stay tuned!
Here are some of our latest product news and updates for agencies and brands.
Logout Page offers another high-impact placement on Facebook
Looking for a high-impact placement for your summer promotion or your back to school campaign? The logout experience on Facebook enables you to feature your message on the Page that more than 36 million people in the U.S. see every day when they log out of Facebook. The logout experience video unit is designed to let you distribute a video post from your Page at the end of a user’s experience when they are looking for something new. With the logout experience link, you can show a link post from your Page driving to a destination on or off of Facebook. The logout experience is available as a Premium package showing your content at logout, on the right-hand side of homepage and in news feed on desk top and mobile. Contact your Facebook representative for more information.
Updates to our self-service tool make it easier to reach your customers
Over the past weeks, we’ve been experimenting with ways to improve the self-service tool that some of you may have seen. We have now implemented these updates to make it even easier for you to reach your customers with your message. Among some of the changes, “Broad Category” and “Precise Interest” targeting can now be used together to target very specific types of potential customers. For example, you can display ads to people who list “Cooking” as a “Precise Interest” and who are parents of 4- to 12-year-olds as part of their “Family Status” Broad Category. With Broad Category targeting, you can now also reach users on specific mobile devices such as iPhone or Android. “Objective” helps you optimize the delivery of your promotion to reach your business objectives. For example, you can chose “Page likes” if you want people to connect with your Page or “app installations” if your goal is to encourage people to click on your app.
Applebee’s sees a more than 3X ROI on Facebook
Check out our case study to learn how Applebee’s used Facebook to raise awareness of its low-calorie entree items. The casual dining chain made its Facebook Page the hub of its Facebook campaign, using Facebook Ads to drive people to its Page where they could read menus and learn about special promotions. The brand conducted a study to determine return on investment by looking at factors including sales, traffic, price by item and marketing inputs. The brand saw a 3 percent increase in sales for the first quarter of 2011 from the integrated campaign that included Facebook. It also saw a greater than 3X return on investment from Facebook Ads, which outperformed other paid digital ads.
The 59th annual Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity kicks off in just three days. On Tuesday, join Paul Adams, Global Head of Brand Design, as he discusses what motivates people to share, and why he believes we’re in the midst of the greatest creative opportunity of our generation.
Speaker: Paul Adams, Head of Brand Design, Facebook and author of Grouped: How small groups of friends are the key to influence on the social web
When: Tuesday 19 June at 14:30-15:15
Where: Theatre Debussy, Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity
Additional program information is available on the Cannes Lions website.
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