Want to increase brand recall and awareness? According to a joint Facebook/Nielsen study, social media networks are the place to go for marketers wishing to engage consumers who are nearing the “action” phase of the buying cycle.

Nielsen, citing that brand marketers have repeatedly requested a method to measure the value of social media advertising, made “a major investment towards helping advertisers understand how to achieve their brand goals in a social context.” And out popped the report: Advertising Effectiveness: Understanding the Value of a Social Media Impression, which includes information from Nielsen’s BrandLift that measures data for more than 800,000 Facebook users and their response to 125 campaigns run on the site by 70 advertisers. Nielsen’s BrandLift originated as a specific tool for measuring the effectiveness of Facebook advertising and was rolled out in September 2009 in the U.S. and in the U.K. in January. While many brands have already gravitated to social media advertising, others are hesitant due to uncertain ROI; Brandlift provides these advertisers with some assurance by providing quantifiable data that can be measured by established standards: Ad Recall, Brand Awareness, and Purchase Intent. Read the rest of this entry »

The Request

If you work in advertising or PR, you have probably heard one of your clients fumble out a request statement regarding this title at some point during the last couple of years. If I had to guess, your marketing client (or his/her CEO boss) recently read an article about how social media is changing the game and how brands need to join today or die tomorrow.

The Response

Upon hearing this request, you paused for a second out of fear that your inner laughter might slip out…then you responded with a confident “We can do it! We’ll get back to you with a SMEDIA plan next week that will blow you away,“ or something to that effect.

Billable Brainstorming

The Boozy Laughter

You and your colleagues left the meeting and headed to the hotel bar (this fictitious meeting is out of town, by the way) where you all had a good laugh about what just happened — oh, those silly clients, ha ha. You expense the tab several drinks later to your client, and hit the sack.

The Reality

When you woke up the next morning, the reality of it hit you. “Shit! How the heck do we create a SMEDIA plan?” Read the rest of this entry »