Image by Michael Kwan (Freelancer) via Flickr

If you read this blog, you likely already care less about the Saints versus the Colts than you do about Super Bowl ads versus Social Media marketing.  After all, the real money isn't earned from the battle on the field but in the battle that occurs during timeouts: Each player on last year's winning team earned a bonus of $83,000 while NBC earned around $213 million in ad revenue for the telecast.

A shift is occurring in the relative importance to marketers of Social Media and Super Bowl advertising.  Of course, the 2010 Super Bowl isn't the first we've seen of the marriage of Social Media and Super Bowl ads.  Last year, Doritos struck gold with a UGC (User-Generated Content) ad produced by two unemployed brothers, and the brand is back this year with more UGC ads competing for even greater prize money.

But this year, there's a difference:  The first evidence that the world has changed between Super Bowl XLIII and XLIV came from Pepsi's news it would not advertise during the big game; instead the brand is opting to invest its marketing budget in a Social Media marketing program called Pepsi Refresh.  Many of us in the Social Media business were a bit shocked by this, not because Pepsi saw the importance of Social Media marketing but because they saw it as an alternative rather than an adjunct to their Super Bowl ad campaign.  As I said to 1to1 Media at the time, "There was a part of me that was a little surprised that (Pepsi) didn't think about layering a social media program on top of a Super Bowl ad."

While Pepsi is to be commended for using the "Social Media vs. Super Bowl ads" hype for terrific PR advantage, the fact is that advertising and Social Media go together like brats and beer.  Advertising is great at raising awareness to a mass audience, while Social Media marketing is perfect for building deeper relationships and influence.  The two are mutually beneficial, not mutually exclusive.

This paired benefit is not lost on other brands; in fact,the first sentence of the New York Times article says it all, "Coca-Cola is telling Pepsi-Cola that when it comes to Super Bowl advertising, you can walk and chew gum at the same time."  Coke is one brand that will use its Super Bowl ad to promote its Facebook program, http://facebook.com/livepositively, where consumers can send virtual goods and earn Coca-Cola donations to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.  Audi is another Super Bowl advertiser that is using their valuable ad time to drive consumers into a Social Media venue;  their "Green Police" ads direct consumers to the Audi YouTube channel where the humorous ads can be viewed, rated, and shared.  On Twitter,Unilever will be engaging people who tweet about their Dove Men+Care ads in real-time during the game and E*Trade will be directing viewers to BabyMail, a site to send e-mail messages using voices that simulate baby talk.

And this is where the interesting shift in the recognition of Social Media marketing is evident:  Last year, brands used Social Media marketing mostly to develop content for and promote their Super Bowl ads, but this year Super Bowl ads are being dedicated to the support of larger Social Media marketing strategies.  The servant has become the master.

The reason for this shift is obvious:  Consumer habits are changing.  Back in 2007, Forrester's North American Social Technographics Online Survey found that only 25% were Joiners--people who maintained a profile on social networking sites.   In 2009, that figure had risen to 59%.  The shift in consumer media consumptions is continuing, and this year's Super Bowl will not be the end of the evolution of marketers' budgets and strategies toward Social Computing.

…(Subtitled) Or at Least Marketing as We Know It!

But first, since this is my first blog post as a Forrester analyst, I thought I’d make a quick introduction.  I’m Augie Ray, a new Sr. Analyst of Social Computing serving interactive marketing professionals.  Prior to joining Forrester’s Bay Area office, I was a Managing Director at Fullhouse, a social and interactive communications agency in Milwaukee, WI.  I’m very excited to be part of the Forrester organization and eager to help clients with research, data, and consulting on the profound and exciting changes underway with Social Media Marketing. 

While the title of my blog post is (obviously) intended as a deliberate bit of provocation, I believe we cannot underestimate the level of change that is occurring in marketing.  Forrester has been writing on this topic for some time, including some great reports on the role of the CMO across the company, the new Adaptive Marketing, Measuring Social Media, and the impact of the Media Meltdown on Marketers (note, these link to report excerpts for Forrester clients).

I hope you’ll find my first Forrester blog post thought provoking:

It is that time of year when every blogger, reporter and analyst is publishing their 2010 Social Media and marketing predictions.  (It’s a rather odd phenomenon–aren’t we interested in what’s happening in the next twelve months other than in December?)  Forrester’s own Social Media prediction report will soon be released, but I’d like to make my own big prediction:  2010 will be the year marketing–as we know it–dies.  Let’s explore the trends and what they mean to marketers. 

Marketing’s been under attack for some time, but in 2009 we witnessed the most profound evolution the marketing world has seen in fifty years or more.  The pace of change is not going to lessen in 2010.  Core elements that have driven marketing practices for decades–such as messaging strategy, mass media, PR, advertising, and others–will continue to change rapidly. 

The latest news from the print world is unsurprising:  Average weekday circulation at 379 U.S. newspapers fell 10.6% during the six months ending in September–the steepest decline ever recorded by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.  And although a recent study found that consumer spending on subscription media increased 7% in the past year, that didn’t mean subscriptions in the traditional sense–the number of households subscribing to magazines dropped two percentage points while subscriptions for home video and smartphone services were both up. 

On the television front, households with DVRs tripled in just three years, more consumers are avoiding ads, and a majority feels there is "too much advertising."  One cannot help but feel sorry for networks and media companies worried about matching ad revenue to expenses, but their response is a bit hard to swallow. TiVo is showing ads to viewers as they are trying to skip other ads, and TNS Media Intelligence tells us that "marketing content represents 43 percent of a prime-time hour"–11:46 minutes per hour of in-show Brand Appearances (a 31% increase from a year ago) and 14:07 of network commercial messages. 

Certainly, someone has to pay for Fringe, Glee, and The Office to be produced, but chasing down consumers and bludgeoning them with more advertising messages hardly feels like an effective strategy. (By the way, I selected those three shows for a reason: according to the latest Entertainment Weekly, almost one in five people viewing those programs is time shifting, and you can guess what that means for advertisers.)

The story on the Internet isn’t much better.  Hulu is striving mightilyto avoid being forced to go the way of TV and load their content with more ads.  Social Media sites like Facebook are so loaded with ads that a consumer spending ten minutes on the site might be exposed to as many as 90 easy-to-ignore ads.  To improve low attention and meager clickthrough rates, advertisers hope to enhance their targeting of consumers based on their online behavior, but the long-threatened intervention of the government may be at hand.  This year could finally be the year that the Feds change the way online advertising works; said  FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz recently, "We’re at another watershed moment in privacy, and the time is right for the commission … to take a broader look at privacy." 

Marketers have, of course, taken note of the power of Social Media, but they continue to struggle with what to do and how to measure it.  In a recent study, 64% of CMOs said they plan to increase their social media budgets next year, but "at least half of respondents expressed uncertainty about ROI."  It strikes me as quite concerning that the top metrics being utilized–mentioned by more than 80% of the CMOs–aren’t deep measures of influence or attitude but shallow measures of presence, such as number of fans and page views.

Meanwhile, it’s possible (although not likely) that the Social Media landscape could change yet again if Facebook stumbles in 2010. (Don’t think it could happen?  Remember that 13 months ago MySpace was drawing more visitors than Facebook;  today Facebook draws 150% more than MySpace.)  Facebook is facing potentially serious challenges.  Some are predicting that young people could soon stream off the site to avoid status updates from mom and dad; by one report, just 50% of the 15-24 crowd is checking Facebook regularly, compared to 55% last year.  More people are complaining (and suing) about being caught in scams from third-party developers on Facebook.  And faced with the growing privacy concerns of its users, how did Facebook react?  By implementing changes that many feel make it not just more difficult to protect their privacy, but actually remove privacy protections from some sorts of data. 

Facebook seems unlikely to go the way of Friendster (if for no other reason than a serious competitor has yet to emerge), but even if Facebook finds itself being MySpaced in 2010, Social Media is here to stay.  The influence of the masses will only continue to grow as Social Media tools improve and more and older consumers climb the Social Technographics Ladder, moving from Inactives, Spectators, and Joiners to Collectors, Critics, and Creators.  

Social Media has just begun to change the way marketing and business operates.  The coming year will see advertising put under the microscope by a connected, savvy, and critical consumer (just ask Motrin and Unilever).  Consumers will use Social Media to exert more influence over marketing and business decisions (see Tropicana and EA).  The best practices for brands in Social Media will continue to evolve (and woe be to brands caught violating consumer trust, as demonstrated by recent missteps by individuals at Honda and Belkin).  And some multi-million-dollar marketing budgets will be challenged and undermined by simple consumer-generated videos (see the Domino’s employee video–or better yet, don’t!) 

 As we enter 2010, consumers have new partners that will help to expand the reach of Social Media dialog even further–the big three search sites.  Bing, Yahoo and Google recently made changes to the way their search engines index the real-time web, and status updates and tweets are rapidly finding their way into top search results.  This means that consumers searching for brands and campaigns are increasingly likely to see results that include blogged and tweeted criticisms as they are links to official brand sites. 

The search engine changes mean that 2010 will be the year when brands can run but they cannot hide.  Gone are the days when marketers could carefully craft messaging and then broadcast that message in a few channels to huge portions of their audiences.  Oh, you can still spend money that way if you want to but in our transparent world, no marketing budget can possibly overcome the actual experience consumers have (and share with friends, followers and Google) with the product, service, or organization.  It no longer matters what you say;  in 2010, your brand will be more defined by what you do and who you are! 

Of course, if marketing burns to the ground in 2010, a new and more powerful marketing will rise from the ashes.  The role of the new marketer:

• Won’t be simply to focus on outbound messaging but to consult with sales, customer service, and human resources on how the brand must be communicated in every consumer interaction, every tweet, and every touchpoint,
• Won’t be merely to imagine creative messages but to fashion programs that are seamless with the actual product and service experience,
• Won’t be to plan bursts of communication on a yearlong calendar but to respond to and be part of the ever-changing dialog with consumers, 
• Won’t be to count friends, page visits, eyeballs, readers, or viewers but to measure changes in consumer attitude and intent,
• Won’t be merely to talk at consumers but to listen and engage one to one,
• Won’t be to build campaigns but relationships,
• Won’t be to create impressions but experiences, and
• Won’t be buy media but to earn it.

To some of you, these changes sound easy, but they represent painful transitions for marketing organizations.  In 2010 and the years that follow, everything will change:  job expectations, skills, metrics, structure, budgets, agency demands and compensation, and the role of the marketing function within the organization.  While the changes will be difficult, they will also be extraordinarily exciting.  In the end, the marketing organization will be integral partners in everything the enterprise does, living up to Peter Drucker’s famous quote:

"Business has only two basic functions — marketing and innovation."

Marketing is dead.  Long live marketing!

You may not know the name Michael Greene, but if you're a Forrester client or you read this blog regularly then you've certainly seen his work. As a researcher on our team, Michael produces some great research — most notably on the topics of sponsorships and video advertising. Below, Michael shares his thoughts on one of our latest research topics, sourcing video creative:

[Posted by Michael Greene.]

Earlier this week, AdAge reported
that PepsiCo is running a public contest (in conjunction with video sharing site 12seconds.tv) to source video ads for its Mountain
Dew product line. Pepsi invited fans to direct, shoot, and edit 12-second videos that
show off their skills and promote Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew fans will get the
opportunity to vote on 6 finalists, from which Pepsi will select 3 winners who will
receive funding to produce 15 second video ads.

Pepsi does a lot of smart things
here, including cross-promoting the contest through Facebook and Twitter and
providing a clear, concise creative brief that outlines Pepsi’s goals, video
formatting specifications, and project timelines.

Pepsi intends to put the winning ads from their contest on national TV. But
looking beyond traditional sources for video creative isn't just an option for TV advertisers — in fact, it can be even more applicable
for online video marketing efforts. Interactive marketers now have
more options than ever for sourcing online video creative, including video
contests, creative crowdsourcing, digital studios, and – of course – traditional
production methods.

Each of these sources has distinct advantages and
disadvantages which Nate Elliott and I detail in our recent report, Online Video
Ad Creative:Digital Studios, Crowdsourcing Vendors, And Video Contests Offer Marketers New Sources Of Creative Content.
But the main point is this: Rather than rely on only one source for ad creative, interactive marketers need
to take a portfolio approach with creative partners — aligning each source of creative with its respective strengths. For instance, contests are a great source of viral video because they naturally create deep
engagement with fans and generate viral buzz; while creative crowdsourcing vendors can offer a low-price alternative to traditional agencies when you need a TV ad or a product demo video. And marketers should consider more than just price when choosing creative sources: they also need to think about what rights they'll have to the videos that are created, and
which vendors can best integrate their videos with a marketers' other online marketing efforts.

So what do you think? Is your organization looking to new
sources for online video ad creative? How do you determine which source to
access?