Top tier social site in development

Swedish social media entrepreneur Erik Wachtmeister has announced the launch of a new social networking site targeting the "top one per cent" of internet users, called Best of All Worlds.

The site, which helps users find events and contacts, counted 20,000 members even before its launch and looms as a rival to Facebook.

Wachtmeister, 57, created one of the world's first social networking sites, aSmallWorld, in 2004, the same year as Facebook. He left the company in 2008.

Best of All Worlds is targeting the same audience, he said.

"The top one per cent of the online audience, people who are leaders in their field, investment bankers, PR people, media, fashion, government ... It's not about jet-set or rich people, but sophisticated people who have good taste," he said on Monday.

"It's more three million people than a billion," he added, a reference to Facebook's announcement in July that it had more than 950 million subscribers.

Best of All Worlds helps users get in touch with each other to find out what's going on where they are, which Wachtmeister said was an improvement on Facebook's service which "looks backwards (and) gives you unstructured information that shows what your friends have done".

Subscription to Best of All Worlds is by invitation only. Wachtmeister did not specify how or when the company would turn a profit.

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/swedish-pioneer-takes-on-facebook-with-best-of-all-worlds/story-e6frgakx-1226460382316

Australian businesses require "rigourous" social media policy

Australian businesses should safeguard themselves and have a plan for social media just as they had for disaster recovery or business continuity, experts have warned.

Speaking at a recent industry event in Sydney, Intel's Philip Cronin said there was a need to have some risk mitigation when using social media.

"There is a telling statistic that up to 60 per cent of Australian companies do not have a meaningful social media policy or process, which they can implement and take advantage of," said Mr Cronin, who is director of regional sales and business development, Asia-Pacific, at Intel.

"If they have got the right rigour around ensuring that there are policies and procedures, then they have got a very good solid basis for moving more energy and time into that environment from a company perspective and trying to advantage from that."


Mr Cronin said CEOs should embrace the changes brought by social media and explore what it meant to their organisation.

"We can use it in many ways as either a communication piece between the different groups or a means to go to market to proliferate our services or other features of the organisation," said Mr Cronin, who is also chair of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA).

The event, hosted by law firm DLA Piper, discussed the use of social media within the enterprise and was attended by CEOs, CIOs and other senior executives.     

DLA Piper intellectual property and technology partner Alec Christie said while there was a desire to capture customers with social media there was a lack of understanding of how it fitted into the traditional legal environment.

"The risks are leaving it to a group or an individual in a company without having a strategy, without having a policy and without having rules in place as to how it is being used," he said.

Mr Christie said a recent finding by the Advertising Standards Bureau held Fosters liable for anti-women and anti-gay comments on the Victoria Bitter Facebook page.

"Although it was other people's comments, it was their Facebook page, it was their advertising and, therefore, they were responsible for those people’s comments."

He said companies should apply the same rigour to social media campaigns as they did to traditional print and TV campaigns.

"There are a number of badly thought out social media strategies where people get unremittingly negative responses and get overwhelmed," he said. "It escalates and it multiples and they have got no plan for dealing with it."

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/companies-should-develop-social-media-policies/story-e6frgakx-1226460269958

Brands limit role of social media

Most firms in Asia Pacific believe social media offers substantial opportunities to drive word of mouth and deliver consumer insights, but less than 5% actively use it to build brands, a study has shown.

Ogilvy & Mather, the advertising agency, and Ipsos, the market research group, polled 153 executives in 14 nations, spanning sectors including food and beverages, financial services and technology.

Exactly 66% of participants reported that "buzz building" was the main purpose for social media, ahead of monitoring online sentiment with 63%. Brand building logged just 2.6% on this metric.

Some 40% of respondents agreed social media had a "primary role" for their business, with Hong Kong, China and Singapore posting over 33% here, falling to around 20% for Indonesia, India and Taiwan.

Marketing teams leveraged social media at 90% of companies, a level of uptake reaching 46% for corporate communications, 34% for customer service, 25% for human resources and sales, and 13% for research and development departments.

In terms of budgets, 60% of interviewees stated that under 5% of their expenditure on marketing and communications was attributed to this channel.

One reason for this may be the comparative novelty of using this medium, as 58% of the featured brand owners had established a presence on such platforms within the last two years.

"Many businesses in Asia missed the first wave of social media because they only saw a consumer fad," said Paul Heath, Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather Asia-Pacific. "Now companies need to understand the strength that social media brings to business, including and beyond marketing."

Indeed, 22% of enterprises had already been "hurt" by social media, as negative buzz aggravated a "crisis" situation. Only half of firms had a plan in place to react to such problems, however.

Additional issues occurred from a lack of in-house co-ordination, given that more than a third of businesses had also seen members of staff set up unauthorised social media properties.

When discussing internal structures, 43% of respondents revealed a single team managed this channel for their whole company, while individuals in different teams did so at 24% of operators.

"Executives in Asia instinctively recognise that social media has changed the behaviour of their customers," said Thomas Crampton, Asia-Pacific Director of Social@Ogilvy. "The difficulty comes in convincing their own organisation to adapt to that change."

Source: http://www.warc.com/LatestNews/News/EmailNews.news?ID=30293&Origin=WARCNewsEmail

Facebook focuses on mobile

Facebook, the social network, is looking to protect its digital ad revenue by enhancing its mobile strategy, and engaging the growing number of users now logging on via wireless devices.

"We have basically retooled and focused the company around mobile," said Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's vice president for engineering.

This firm's new approach aims to enhance the value of mobile ads, which derive less revenue than the web alternative, due both to technical limitations such as not supporting Adobe Flash, and as users find such messages more irritating on small screens.

Vowing to put "mobile first", Facebook has released new versions of its iPhone and iPad apps, which have been rewritten in Apple's native programming language for improved functionality.

The site has also been working with Apple to integrate specific features into the forthcoming iOS6 operating system. These include photo-sharing capabilities and the chance to use Siri, the iPhone's voice-recognition software, to post status updates.

Internally, Facebook's product teams will now create mobile versions of new features concurrently with the web versions, instead of doing mobile translations following a feature's online launch.

To further develop its position, Facebook has developed an on-going training scheme. It has trained 100 engineers to write apps, and Schroepfer said this programme will soon be open to all employees, including those in marketing and design.

The end-goal of these changes is to ensure the company offers a compelling proposition for advertisers without alienating users.

Key mobile marketing strategies include sponsored stories, according to Gokul Rajaram, product director of ads at Facebook. These treat users' posts as ads, and amplify world of mouth.

Facebook is also using a new ad tool which allows brands to post offers to their pages. If sponsored, these will also appear in users' news feeds.

Company executives, however, have declined to comment on rumours that Facebook is working on its own mobile operating system and phone, saying they will not comment on "unannounced products".

Source: http://www.warc.com/LatestNews/News/Facebook_focuses_on_mobile.news?ID=30289

Kellogg's and Woolworths partner to provide kids' breakfast

Kellogg’s has teamed up with Woolworths to launch a program to encourage more kids to eat breakfast cereal before they go to school.

Former Olympian Melinda Gainsford-Taylor has been hired to front the ‘Breakfast Crusade’ and will visit schools to push the importance of eating the first meal of the day.

The campaign, which will run from 22 August to 19 September, also involves a promotion in Woolworths stores, with deals on Kellogg’s cereal, milk and juice.

A press release from Kellogg’s pointed out that nearly half a million Australian children skip breakfast and perform worse in basic numeracy and literacy tests as a result.

Kellogg’s, which regularly gets hit by claims that it markets unhealthy products to kids, has also press released a program to give away free cereal in schools for the first time.

Its Breakfast Buddies program, which has been running from 2007, sees Kellogg’s brands Corn Flakes, Rice Bubbles and Sultana Bran given away to schools, sports clubs, community groups and childcare facilities.

A Kellogg’s spokesman said that the company’s high-sugar ‘treat’ brands, such as Froot Loops and Nutri-Grain, were not part of the program. He added that no Kellogg’s branding was involved in the exercise.

The program is to launch two months after Kellogg’s announced that it has reduced the salt content of Rice Bubbles and Corn Flakes by 20%.

Kellogg’s was named Australia’s worst junk food advertiser by activist group Parent’s Jury in November last year.

Parent Jury campaigns manager Corrina Langelaan said: “It’s important that children have access to breakfast and heartbreaking that this is not always the case. It’s great when corporations give back to the community, as long as the strings attached don’t involve the promotion of unhealthy foods to children. All kids deserve to have a healthy breakfast.”

Source: http://mumbrella.com.au/kelloggs-and-woolies-launch-breakfast-crusade-free-cereal-given-away-to-schools-111119

Advertisers use facial recognition to measure response

Advertisers are preparing to start using facial recognition technology to gauge people's reaction to ads in a development somewhat reminiscent of the future envisioned in Minority Report, the Tom Cruise movie in which crimes are predicted before they happen.

Called Link, the technology allows advertisers to test reactions to ads based on people's facial expressions and is being pioneered in Australia by research company Millward Brown.

Panelists recruited to test ads will not even have to leave the house. Technology utilising webcams on home computers will measure facial movements.

Darren Poole, global brand director for Link, said it was powerful enough to see through people's spoken responses to questions and divine their real reaction based on facial expression.

He said such "facial coding" had only recently become possible as previously individual interviews had to be coded separately, making it unsuitable for large-scale use.

"Human collating of results takes a long time but we have now get computer responses very quickly," Mr Poole said. "It is there to tell advertisers how their ads are doing and how they can be optimised."

The program tracks 22 to 24 points on a person's face and then uses algorithms to correlate their reactions.

"We have always known emotions play an important part in how people react to advertising and the end game is sales," Mr Poole said. "We are getting some things consumers don't know they are experiencing."
He cited one example where an ad for a skincare brand showed a man touching his wife's stomach. While none of the people in the survey panel mentioned the gesture, their faces showed a powerful emotional response which made the brand appeal to them. The ad was tweaked to make more of the gesture, resulting in greater recall.

"People can sometimes be saying no to something but what they are actually feeling can be quite the opposite," Mr Poole said. "They can be too embarrassed to say something."

Mr Poole said the system could be used by advertisers to see how close to the edge they could take their marketing.

"If a campaign is pushing the boundaries in terms of humour or controversy this is a controlled means to test how consumers really respond," he said.

While the technology is limited to people who sign up for Millward Brown's consumer panels, Mr Poole said it could be developed to be used as a live measurement tool on any device where a camera could film the user's face.

"We are only reading people's facial expression at the moment, but the technology could be expanded," he said. "Minority Report is not that far off."

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/marketing/agencies-look-to-facial-recognition-to-gauge-peoples-reaction-to-ads/story-fna12mff-1226458459619

Established retailers to rule the web

 

Myer chief executive Bernie Brookes says the traditional big retailers will overcome their reluctance to adapt to the internet by becoming the top 10 shopping sites within five years.

Mr Brookes on Friday admitted that Australian retailers had been slow to move into online shopping, due partly to the higher costs involved in delivering goods in a geographically large country with a relatively small population.

"There's a diseconomy in the lack of population and a diseconomy because of the tyranny of distance, so that's been a barrier to entry," he told a business lunch in Sydney.

Mr Brookes said that it was easier for US and UK businesses to start trading on the internet because many already sold through catalogues.

Australians instead often shopped as a social outing.

He said Australian retailers were quickly catching up with their online offerings and predicted that in the next three to five years the most popular would be local department stores.

"If we produce a list in three years' time of the top ten internet sites in Australia, it will be dominated by Myer, DJs, Kmart, Target, the Just Group, the existing group of retailer" he said.

"That's exactly what's happened in the US and the UK.

"Out of the top 20 retailers in the US online about 16 of them are bricks and mortar retailers."

The recent National Australia Bank Online Retail Sales Index showed that online spending in Australia in June was up 19 per cent from June 2011.

By comparison, bricks and mortar sales rose by 4.2 per cent in June 2012 compared with the same month in 2011.

A Roy Morgan study released earlier this month also showed that early adapters of online retailing have reported revenue growth in the past year, while those that were slower to embrace internet selling had gone backwards.

Mr Brookes said customer service was still an important part of the retail business and admitted that he made a mistake in his first few years as Myer boss when he slashed staff numbers to cut costs.

He said over the past few years Myer had increased staff numbers and implemented more training to improve customer service.

Source: http://www.news.com.au/business/breaking-news/old-retailers-to-rule-the-web-says-myer/story-e6frfkur-1226452749907