Facebook - now as a Hollywood Movie..about Facebook!

Facebook will soon have its own story told.. Will it be a success? At this point the buzz figures are already speaking out loud, potentially powered at least by one in 12 human beings on this planet who now "happen" to be Facebook users, numbering already 500 millions chaps! If it will prove more popular than the social website itself - not sure, yet - “The Social Network” is quite an ambitious production: take a look at the trailer released just a few days ago:



The movie is based on a book written by Ben Mezrich, “The Accidental Billionaire”. Although it speaks about Facebook's foundation history, it's using primarily co-founder's side of the story - Eduardo Saverin. Mezrich stated that he tried to get in touch with Mark Zuckerberg for his own views, but was unable to reach him.


The movie begins with Zuckerberg entering Harvard College, showcasing him wanting to become a part of the popular circle in high school and inventing the idea of a website where people can post their college experiences, photos, and innermost thoughts. This is how Facebook was born..

The movie literally follows Zuckerberg through the ups and downs that fame and money can sometimes bring.




A few curiosities to take away:

- Facebook was launched in 2004, firstly within Harvard Colleage walls (for internal access only);
- within 2 hours of the site being made available to the public, Zuckerberg recieved 22,000 facebook hits;
- Mark Zuckerberg's character will be played by Jessie Eisenberg (starred in “Zombieland”);
- The movie is set to be available in theatres on October 1, 2010;
- It was directed by David Fincher, known for previous productions “Fight Club”, “Zodiac,” and “Seven.”

Enjoy!! Barely wait to exhange some reviews as soon as it comes to UK..and yes, don't rush into falling in love with this incredible success story as yet, it might be a bit biased (remember there's only one side of the story in place, plus it's all about the new emerging form of marketing - the social media one!)

Cheers,

@Digilunch

Continue Reading...

Case Study: How PPC teams up with PR to re-build BP's image

Today it was announced that BP has agreed to set aside £13.5billion to compensate victims of the devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill. So far BP has lost almost half of its market value already. Needless to say what a significant impact this has had on the overall brand image, where PR strategies come in place almost instanteneously.
So what exactly did the company do to improve its image or at least to maintain what's left of it?
It's interesting to note that BP did not seek their traditional advertising agency for advice, Ogilvy & Mather, but instead took on Purple Strategies, a political consultancy, run by Steve McMahon (Democrat) and Alex Castellanos (Republican) for an online marketing campaign.

Measures taken:

- BP launched a dedicated section on their website called the Gulf of Mexico Response homepage (giving the a wide array of options: latest news, recent updates, recent videos and a "keep up to date" feature listing feeds to Twitter, FB, YT & Flickr)
- Also, the company created a YouTube channel, launched a Flickr poll and started live broadcasting on Twitter.

As for its major budget slice - it went t o PPC rather than press or social media:

It is estimated that they are spending up to $1M a month on an integrated search marketing campaign using Google AdWords and YouTube (Searchenginewatch.com):

$995K spent on Google AdWords ads in the U.S.
5M total search ad impressions
750K clicks
$1.33 average cost per click

Anyway, this is a small part of the total reputation management budget when compared to the $50Million BP estimated to have spent on TV ads.

Thus, since end of May, BP has had top visibility (position 1-2) for over 1,000 search terms related to "oil spill" on the search engine and their videos are promoted to the top of search results for videos on YouTube:




What did the company gained by bidding on over 1000 crisis-related keywords? Firstly, the advantage to have the opportunity to state their view first, before giving the visitors the freedom to choose randomly, as we all know random may include both positive and negative views.

Although, there's an issue of overexposure and positional manipulation, still - the move stirred a huge wave among international media. My point - well-done anyway (even the negative PR can become positive, right?), although was it cost-effective or not, we don't know yet.

Cheers,

@Digilunch
-

Continue Reading...

E-WOM & PR crisis: KFC's credibility questioned in China

KFC,the fast food chain, is currently facing one of most talked-about online PR crises in China. Failure to deliver a promised, half-price discount on a Family Value Barrel has transformed an online promotion into a major word of mouth crisis within just a couple of days.

The company has a chain of more than 2,000 stores in China. It first announced its April promotion – Super Tuesday – on its official site www.kfcyouhui.com, offering 50% discounts for 3 popular items on its menu:

The KFC Family Barrel was planned to be on a half-priced promotion during April 6th to 9th. Money-off coupons were made available to download in small batches at highly specific times of day, and were only accessible via KFC's page on Taobao, the ecommerce platform. According to a Chinese media source(Globaltimes.cn)- The Family Barrel started its “flash sale” at 16:00 on Apr.05, with 100 limited coupons, whereas by the time numerous customers arrived claiming their discounts, many of them were refused the meal packs. Why? Appearantly many stores weren't aware that 16:00 was the starting point, relying on the exact promotion period: April 6th-9th.



Anyway, copies soon spread virally across the web, which pushed the overall level of demand far beyond company's expectations. Thus, an other reason showed up: illegitimate coupons. Dissatisfied consumers showed their reaction in both online and offline terms:

1. Online consumers' reaction:
- a search on baidu.com (Google's equivalent in China) for “KFC half-price Family Barrel” showed nearly 50,000 negative results;
- a single post about the matter on Tianya, one of China's biggest internet communities, had been viewed almost 360,000 times and generated 2,279 comments in one week.

Some of the examples of public comments are quite representative for the overall sentiment:

olpe
Stop going to KFC. No nutrition and now no credibility!

夜礼服假面瘫
Let’s all go to Taobao, bid, pay and then give a bad comment!

面具面具
KFC earns a lot, but during the donation period for the natural disaster, KFC and McDonald’s donated nothing.
Source: Littleredbook.cn (the site covers Chinese advertising and media industries)

2. The offline public reaction spread accordingly:

- 20 branches of KFC in Nanjing were "besieged" by dissatisfied customers, while 30 people refused to leave a restaurant in Shanghai, as reported by The China Daily:



While the long-term impact on KFC remains unclear, there's an obvious negative sentiment shared among KFC's both online and offline customers. Moreover, Globaltimes reports that the company has been already sued citing a breach of contract and violation of consumers' rights. Major argument appears to be the lawyer's claim that "Employees did nothing to test the authenticity of the coupons"

Clearly, when the brand image is damaged on either offline or online platforms, the brand's reputation will have to be "healed" within both of them.
The company has already taken a stand, by making an official statement, although there's been no significant measure taken so far to challenge its online negative sentiment. It seems, the company believes that the offline impact should spread virally.

Efficient or not? The most effective answer to me is the one placed firstly within the very platform where the crisis was generated - it would have lead to a quicker reaction and much higher transparency.

Any thoughts?

Yours,
@Digilunch

Continue Reading...

Social Search - the next "big thing"

Social search continues to be in the limelight, being targeted by major search giants. It all has a reason: social recommendations, which is now "a movement" nobody dares to overlook, particularly due to highest level of confidence we now place in online WOM, or the advices, answers we hear from peers, friends and simply online strangers.

According to the today's news bulletin (The Telegraph): Google has begun indexing status updates from Facebook Pages and including them in its real-time search results.

It should be good news for small and medium businesses opening their Facebook pages in search for new online interactions and further insights collection, since Facebook Fan Pages are meant: “for organisations, businesses, celebrities, and bands to broadcast great information to fans in an official, public manner” (basically - genuine marketing tools).

Integration of social search started similar to a "Gold rush" by the end of last year, when Google and Bingo have included Twitter streams. Last week Google announced indexing MySpace status updates and today is for the first time when Google announced Facebook search integration - although only for Fan pages and not for user's status updates (as compared to Microsoft's Bingo).

This integration however, means future searchability for 3 million Fan Pages with an audience of 5.3 billion fans!

Twitter popularity and resistance in front of political censorship (the case of Iran protests, Facebook ban in China and Vietnam, etc) started to question the search engines'ability to serve the latest updates on real-time stories and events.
Many have discovered the reliability of social recommendations searched on Twitter over the usual searches.

Today Google and Microsoft’s Bing are partnering with Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, in order to make their searches more relevant.

The question is: since we already trust Word-of-mouth more than any meadia source when it comes to brands' reliablity - will social search become the main tool to deliver the answers we're looking for?
If so, will that mean - for instance - an advancement of commercial Flogs ahead of genuine Blogs?

Curious to hear,

Yours,
Digital Lunch

Continue Reading...

..And the Nobel Peace Prize goes to - the Internet!

Actually not yet, as the winners have not been announced, but it doesn't eliminate the possibility since for the 1st time in history an inanimate object enters the Nominee List for the Nobel Peace Prize - The Internet itself ( as announced today by Forbes).

The Nobel Committee maintained its tradition to preserve the contenders' names secret for 50 years. Still some nominations were made public. According to Associated Press, nominees include the requisite European human rights group and a Chinese political activist. You may well wonder how come such a contraversial medium as the Internet became listed for Nobel Peace Price, when despite its whole package of benefits it comes with a number of backbones as: cyber crimes, privacy issues and many more?

Eventually it looks like these "side-effects" haven't stoped the Italian version of the Wired magazine to launch the "Internet proposal campaign" last year in order to support its nomination for Nobel Peace Prize 2010, entitled "Internet for Peace" .

The Wired main argument was that “the internet can be considered the first weapon of mass construction, which we can deploy to destroy hate and conflict and to propagate peace and democracy,” (citing Riccardo Luna, editor-in-chief of the Italian edition of Wired magazine). Additionally The Wired brought up Iran's latest election case to praise the spread of E-WOM ahead of any censor attempts, which makes "the internet become a weapon of global hope.”

As you see - Internet's major assets - Twitter and Web 2.0 tools alike were major arguments for the Internet's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, which by the way last year was awarded to President Obama.

What would be your reaction if the prize would indeed go to..the Internet?

Curious to hear,

All yours,
Digital Lunch

Continue Reading...