Money can’t buy love, but it can buy you millions of guaranteed friends to support your politics, purchases, or personal pursuits.
I just generated over 100,000 friends, followers, and fans for 4 separate clients over the past 96 hours! The catch phrase immortalized by the Beatles “Money can’t buy me love”, has been repeated as the golden rule of relationships for decades by hopeful hearts and probably poor romantic novelists has now been proven a farce. What seemly separates social friend fishing as opposed to true personal interaction is the message relevance and method of continual, hierarchical engagement. The expected end result is not to collect friends, followers, and fans, but to create an army of like minded individuals that can be lead to a specific action. Whether that action is one of capitalism or cause, integrated socialization into any media campaign can create exponential results.
The idea of pay-per-friend came from my initial pay-per-call platform I built years ago, in which you only paid for qualified client calls generated from our advertising. Unlike pay-per-friend, pay per call is a one shot, one kill deal, when a call comes in the advertiser answers, the interaction is now over. Referral potential from a call in client is low. In a pay-per-friend model, targeted friend is engaged, we continue to feed the target client relevant interaction, which create additional interaction with the target friends circle of influence, thus semi-viral fellowship begins to grow exponentially.
Pay-Per-Friend campaign basic steps – minus social technology details
Step 0: Start with the end in mind – simply put, in a perfect world what is the end result? Do you want 10,000 calls into the governor’s office? Change the perception of consumer confidence in a specific product or brand? Or promote your stock to those most likely to buy? All is possible, but the goals need to be set ahead of time.
Step 1: Set the stage / Client targeting via digital listening – this means selectively harvesting followership by listening to the interactions within the social sphere and create immediate engagement based upon the relevance of the conversation which compliments a per determined position.
Step 2: Socially class engaged as a leader or lemming – simply stated, does the engaged follower have their own following. Dependent upon the influence of the engaged participant, semi-automated to personal social interaction may be the best course of action, as opposed to the lemmings that will follow and syndicate a social conversation just to be a part of the group, cause, or conversation.
Step 3: Cross connect social, mobile, and traditional media platforms – Create tasks that help identify your social army, and allow you as the brand, advertiser, or agency to connect those identified as influencers to cross pollinate to other social mediums. The easiest way this can be achieved is to give influencers access to social, mobile, and ad mob tools to elevate their influence status.
Step 4: Seed social action and let leadership take form – plant a single seed in the mind of an individual, and potentially change the world. Carefully crafted and timely interactions will yield a predictive result. Those of social influence will lead an army of followers to an end action. Dependent upon the levels of influence of your social sphere, interactions can range from syndicated to highly personal.
Step 5: Create a rewards system – rewards can be a powerful motional tool, but like any compensation, the expectation must meet reality. Doesn’t promise and not deliver, or you will create a viral Acoup d'état.
Step 6: Measure the social success, optimize and repeat– from step 0 to now, friends were engaged, mobilization occurred, and most likely new opportunities emerged.
Step 7: RECYCLE– Just because you won the war, does not mean you throw your army away!
Can Social Listening Make Consumer Behavior Predictive?
Over the past few years, I have been using a hodgepodge of analytic tools in to monitor, engage, and in some cases change the course of consumer behavior through a variety of engagement strategies. Given that my first few ventures included running a few thousand dating, gaming sites, and entertainment websites, I thought that among my peers what I was doing was common place. I was recently invited to speak at Goizueta Business, Emory University’s MBA program, and had the unique opportunity to interact with both business leaders and the brands that they represented. As part of my introduction, Dr. Benn Konsynski (former Yahoo and Netscape adviser), played the following video, which was more of an eduction my me than the attendees for my presentation.
In the above video, IBM is using data grouping and analysis in real time to make better decisions.
In my experience real time data is a small part of a much larger picture. Yet, what if you could process real time data of not only current events, but project forward that data into a fairly accurate forecast. Now let's take this one step further, if you understand the yin and yang, the cause and effect that relates to changing behavior patterns, and you selectively engaged those which influence the mass opinion, could you change the attitudes, behaviors, and perception of those which influence others?If you captured the sentiment of those socially influencing others, would you actually cause a ripple effect in which human behavior of those following be altered to a probable outcome? My name is John Cataldi, and I am an entrepreneur.
Will Paying for Voter Action Rather than Gross Media Spending Be the New Measuring Stick for Political Campaigns?
With less than 20 days left until the gubernatorial election, tens of millions of political campaign dollars will be spent in last minute media purchases. The hope is to sway voter favor to the political candidate of choice by flooding the market with the most media. Ironically, over 65-80% of political spending is ineffective and will not reach most voters or drive polling results, as a consensus among top brand managers. Political campaigns are now embracing pay per voter action also referred to as pay per performance marketing as an effective means to reach and engage registered voters, prior to their campaign dollars running out. According to McKinsey Research, “Multi-channel marketing can increase effective consumer reach by 200-400%”.
Given the growing trend in tracking voter actions in relation to a campaign’s media spend, Adreka announced today the launch of their Pay for Voter Action Platform. “This is the first pay for performance media platform designed for the political space,” says project manager Alicia Armstrong. Adreka measures voter engagement by tracking voter actions directly related to a campaign’s traditional and social media interactions which include phone calls of donors and volunteers. Moreover, Adreka’s platform also engages online influencers (those having a large online following), from Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, and localized political blogs. The goal is to create voter action that is predictable and measurable in our clients favor, says John Cataldi, Media ROI Evangelist for Adreka Advertising.
Adreka’s, Pay Per Action Political Platform works by 1) understanding what is really important to the majority of the voting populous through social analytics; 2) creating and syndicating relevant media across TV, Radio, Internet, Social Media, and Mobile Media; and 3) measuring what media channels are effectively affecting voter options. The end result is a political media campaign that only allocates media spending on the media that sways polls into the candidate’s favor. As an added benefit, many voters responding to Adreka’s political adverts can be legally tracked and marketed to via their mobile device and social media network.Depending on the campaign, costs can run from $10-$250 per voter action. “I have seen Adreka in action; this type of political and media convergence is a game changer for any election”, says leading political consultant, Gabe Winslow.
Not understanding how the media conversions can be directly correlated to voter response is prevalent even in campaign watchdog groups. Ross Johnson, Chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission of California stated, “More campaign spending means greater influence. To believe otherwise, is to presume that candidates for public office live in a cave”. According to Cataldi, “If political campaigns were compared to corporations with similar media spends; the end result would be the destruction of most top brands. Ross Johnson is correct in that more spend equates to more media, but an effective spend can outperform an opposing campaign by a factor of 10x. I believe that the future of not only political, but all media spending will be measured on performance and end result, anything less is a waste of dollars and time.”
About Adreka, Inc. Adreka provides the leading media monitoring and engagement platform for marketing, communications and customer support professionals. The company's new digital listing technologies allows the monitoring of all forms of social media, mobile, and traditional media, with a heavy emphasis on analytics, predictability, and media effectiveness. Visit www.Adreka.com, call 678-804-7144, or email sales@adreka.com for more information.
About John Cataldi
An avid technophile, serial entrepreneur, and media spokesperson, John Cataldi is the CEO of Adreka, an open media exchange to allow agencies and advertisers to target, create, syndicate, and track their traditional and interactive advertising. Visit www.JohnCataldi.com for more information.
Can the application of perfectly targeted advertising go as far as predictable behavior modification?
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In the year 2015 people have access to a breath and depth of information, unmanageable in an earlier era. Everyone contributes in some way, participating to create a living breathing media scape,“ is the opening of one of the most compelling media presentations who’s plot consists of a series of real life events from 1989 to 2005, and continues through a series of hypothetical events to 2015 AD.
As an connoisseur of all things adverting, I am compelled to believe the more relevant and individualized content is package and delivered the more meaningful it would be to the end user. Though in 2008, most media is fairly generalized. Advertisers do their best to put their media messages where they believe it will best convert into potential customers, but I can assure your well over 50% of most media campaigns are wasted regardless of medium.
But the winds of change are upon us. People are becoming more free with their personalized data, whether they know it or not. Reminiscent of Minority Report, which depicted John Anderson, played by actor Tom Cruise, walking through a Subway where all of the advertisements were specifically targeted to his character that identified him by rental scan that seemly accessed a database of his consumption habits, lifestyle, demographic, and geographic, and served his advertising which was most relevant to him through a series of holographic billboards. Precursors of this technology exist today, though not at the point that would make it cost advantageous for agencies to spend the dollars to create the infrastructure to track, store, and disseminate the data feeds to external devices. To fast track a similar ad platform would require an advertising organization (Eg. Google, Yahoo, Interpublic, Omnicom, WPP) to joint partner with both a GPS / blue tooth enabled mobile network(s), and a physical media network that has locations in densely populated areas that could provide close proximity to their target customer (Eg Clear Channel, Lamar, CBS Outdoor).
So how would such a system work you make ask? Initially, GPS tracking via your mobile device would be the most likely choice. Current estimates reportedly suggest that “nearly 84-percent of the US population will have mobile phones by the end of 2008, which is projected 99% percent within the next 5 years,”according to SNL Kagen Mobile Research. GPS tracking would not only tell you where you are, but your continual geographic data feed overlapped with information on venues, business, and time is various locations would begin would build a fairly accurate depiction of your life and consumption habits. Moreover, through the utilization of blue tooth technology, RFID product tagging, could allow a secondary data concerning products of interest. Whereas, RFID tags could transmit every product you hold in proximity to your cell phone, as a suspect product of interest. Thus, a cumulative and combined database of geographic, demographic, travel habits, and interests are tabulated through an algorithm which then finds the most relevant advertisement given your current situation through a media device that is in proximity to your personal “blue tooth” envelope.
The end result of the proper application of timely media could go as far as predictable behavior modification. John always goes to Starbucks Coffee in the morning, but he was running late. Taking the subway to work. John notices the video panel playing a Starbucks commercial that says, “Did you miss your Vanilla Latte this morning (which happens to be the drink John always buys), there is a Starbucks location 1 block from your next stop across from the exit”. What luck John exclaims, I’m getting off at the next stop, its almost like they knew… or did they?!
The BIG Media Advertising Question on Ad Exchanges
Will ad exchanges commoditized all that is left unsold? Personally the branding campaign that your direct sales force sells will still be around for many years to come, branding campaign will not go away, and so is your direct sales force. I see value to custom campaign that deals with cutting edge ideas, like social applications, widgets, and custom web / cellular integrated campaigns. EG. Yahoo Right Media RMX, DoubleClick AdX, Microsoft AdECN, ContextWeb ADSDAQ, and etc. But can an ad exchange provide this value from a single application?
I have been following on this subject matter for 3+ years and the product offered is getting better every quarter, so where will ad exchanges be in a few years? – Thank You, Benny Radjasa, Past exec at Freewebs & Vizi Media
The BIG Media Advertising Answer on Ad Exchanges by John Cataldi
I think that you are currently underestimating the ad exchange market place. A true media exchange should be agnostic, thus allowing any media type to be integrated on a as needed basis, yet bringing able to integrate a comparison engine, making all media measurable based upon targeted frequency and reach.
But a media exchange that focuses just on media placement and purchases is a small part of a much needed larger picture. Not to mention remnant media space (unused) gets bumped often, is usually at a crappy slot, and is overall has little value.
The media life cycle is the convergence of the entire media life cycle. The ultimate ad media platform will unite all media on a single exchange (traditional and interactive) and would provide 1) advertiser information on what advertising medium(s) is best for their customer base, 2) allow them to purchase those media channels, 3) allow the advertiser to create their commercial, radio spots, billboard, etc, (creative assets), 4) deploy those assets across multiple networks, and 5) monitor the effectiveness of the media in terms of ROI for the advertiser, and 6) give smart recommendations on what to do next.
I know of one such company that is beta testing this type of Ad exchange engine, get back to me if you would like to be involved their beta test.
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