There’s a couple of very interesting points to this. Firstly, the campaign wasn’t actually “on” Pinterest at all, yet perhaps everyone wants to be associated with the latest network-du-jour that it is inevitable that some will claim this. The organisers simply used Pinterest to find the 50 recipients, but as they go on to point out, recipients not only posted on Pinterest, but also on Facebook and Twitter, and no doubt other less association-favourable networks too.

We also thought the results were interesting. 50 recipients were contacted, and of those an intriguingly “almost” 100% posted about their gift. From those posts, 2,284 Interactions were identified, presumably referring to likes, comments, etc. If we assume 50 users participated, and that they all used all three networks to post (Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter) and that they posted once each on each channel, that’s about 15 interactions per post on average. 694,853 impressions were also recorded, although given the variety of networks being monitored, that can mean a number of different things, but lets take that on face value.

On the face of it then, not exactly mind-blowing in terms of the impact it had. This perhaps provides some insight into the relative value of social channels,and the degree to which they are useful in marketing terms. The propagation of the content was actually quite limited, and although we don’t know what expectations were, this didn’t feel like a completely free campaign to execute. Shipping costs alone would have been a couple of hundred dollars.

So how do we establish the value? Short term, we can slightly crudely look at the facts. We have 50 users, generating 2,300 interactions and 695k impressions. Taking Facebook’s media costs as a guide, and even assuming these impressions are premium value impressions, that’s a media value of about $2,500. If all of those interactions were clicks to the brand, the value is probably about the same.

Of course, what we can’t place such a direct value on is the creation of “almost” 50 brand advocates, and perhaps this is the longer-term value building role of social marketing campaigns. But if we think that’s hard to place a value on, then it only gets harder when we introduce other variables, that will occur over the longer time frame we are referencing, such as fatigue rates of an individuals’ advocacy, or the increased risk of a poor experience. The long term value of this advocacy building will be lost if it is not supported by continued investment in the product or the service.

Hard to place a value on then, and given these results and multiples of interaction and impression, I wonder if the Kotex team, or more poignantly the MD, will be quite so enthusiastic to do it again, or to make it an even larger exercise to increase it’s impact. The returns don’t seem to justify it in the short term, but as part of a longer-term strategy, it could be just the beginning of the real understanding of the role and value of social in a marcomms strategy and it’s contribution towards the positive projection of the brand.

Along with the now-standard hyperbole about another run-away success, XXXL-valuations predicated on future, albeit unlikely sustained revenues, there is mention of the prospect of acquisition at afore-mentioned valuations by one of the genre’s big players, Zynga.

In one passage the similarity of the game with the parlour game classic, Pictionary, is identified.

Yet when the article notes that the potential suitor has the might and the wherewithall to make a clone game if the game developer doesn’t sell, it is cited as controversial.

Anyone else starting to feel like something is missing here?

The game itself isn’t a new idea – the article mentions that much itself, though you’d never guess from the sentiment of the article.

Incredibly, there is even the mention of a TV show based on the format. The producers of Win Lose or Draw might have something to say about that, yet not even the whiff of “cloning” is uttered here.

So it leads us to wonder, how many downloads, users, “in-app” revenue do you need before the game and indeed the entire game format, can be considered yours and yours alone to profit from?

But are Sweepstakes a good way to acquire fans? High profile examples might make us think a bit harder about how best to use prize draws.

Let’s consider the Chase Freedom facebook page, and a recently ended sweepstake that offered two levels of prizes. Firstly, 504 prizes of $500 each, issued through a Visa Pre Paid Card, to one winner every hour for 21 days. The prize cost of this element then is $252,000. But that is dwarfed by the Grand Prize: One lucky winner will be selected at random to $1 million.

Wow.

Total prize fund for this campaign then being $1,252,000.

The page itself, on the 28th October 2011, just a few days after the grand prize closing date, stands at 474,203 fans, or Likes. That’s approximately $2.64 per fan, even if every one of those fans was generated directly by virtue of the prize draw, based only on the cost of the prizes, and before any related marketing costs or at least the costs of planning and designing the competition have been taken into account.

Cost per fan, at least $2.64.

If there was little or no marketing spend, then it would be safe to assume most of the Fans were existing customers that heard about it through their regular notices from the bank. So the increased value to the bank will be: some slightly more engaged existing customers? Perhaps three weeks of incremental positive sentiment amongst customers and the small number of friends they may have affected?

Alternatively, if there was in any way substantial marketing promotion of the sweepstake, and let’s face it if you’re giving away $1m you may as well tell the world about it, then the actual cost  per Fan will be considerably higher than $2.64. What’s more the likelihood is you have a lot of “Fans” that are specifically motivated by prize draws, and that could get expensive to maintain their interest in you brand. They are likely to be transient, unlikley to listen to your messages other than new giveaway or prize draw opportunities, and are probably more intent in finding the next promotion than they are applying for your credit card.

So are prize draws particularly effective ways of driving new fans? Perhaps they are better used as “thank-you”s to your existing customers and fans, and by virtue of that the improved sentiment and loyalty may be a valuable property to build. But it is probably not an effective way to acquire new “fans” – who of course are still some way from being customers – and at a minimum of $2.64 and quite easily double that, it is not even a particularly cost-effective way to generate leads.

Not a single Post to say “Hello world”, or something equally profound. Nothing.

Rubbish.

No posts, no update, nothing.

At this rate of growth, it will surpass MySpace user numbers in about 174 days. Reports of hurried preparation of an 8-figure IPO in the near future are “wide of the mark” according to a socialmediocrity.com spokesperson, despite increasing demand for anything “social”.

In fact, evidence has begun to emerge that many of the key, and early, markets are falling in user numbers. According to Inside Facebook’s data service, the US has lost 6 million users, Canada 1.5 million – approximately 4% and 8% respectively.

Daily user numbers from Google also support that evidence, showing thatdaily user have been falling for several weeks now, cerainly in the US, and the UK, shown.

Daily Facebook users in US falling

UK Facebook users also falling

Better news still exists in other territories, and there is of course a lot more growth to come from the less mature markets. Turkey, for example, has always stood out as an over-adopting nation almost, and yet growth continues there

Growing base in Turkey

Does any of this impact Facebook’s strategic direction? The pressure to monetise existing audiences may grow, especially as FB move inevitably towards an IPO, and it won’t help valuations if falling mature markets become the norm.

Or will falling “western” users increase the pressure to expand in the more nascent markets? And presumably seek to retain and monetise aggressively. The Facebook user experience, which has been exceptional to date bar the occassional privacy indiscretions, could suffer with the combined pressures of growth and revenue.

To be fair, I had no idea Park Ji Sung was a Tory. Who would have thought?

I only hope they’re not hoping to attract any new talent with a pedantic eye for detail, or anything so silly. Even this hawkish amateur can spot that possibly the second most important aspect of any snakes & ladders board appears to be missing. That’s right. The numbers.

Oh, but hang on. They’re not missing entirely. You see, they have actually included them, it’s just that they failed to understand the medium they were working with and executed the idea in a laissez-faire kind of way so that they don’t actually show up when the punch line is delivered (in the photo album view) . Presumably they wouldn’t want a client to think that’s how they manage their projects either.

The concept appears to be based on a snakes & ladders board, and the “real-world” version (that’s real-world in facebook) of it can be seen here (which they may at some stage update to improve the execution)

If you do got to the real version you’ll be able to see that the individual picture views include the numbers but that the crop in the summary level kind of cuts them out.

Nice idea though. I might nick it and do it properly.

(Tip to the designers – just move the numbers that you photo-shopped into each image up a bit, and to the right a bit)

And according to the report this goes beyond friend-connections targeting, as is currently available in the Facebook ad platform (allowing advertisers to target *only* connected friends of existing “fans” or “likes”), and covers the possibility of broader inference. What does that mean? Well, in a nutshell, that if you have infirmation missing from your profile, but amongst your hundreds of connections on the network there is some commonality or popular data item for that missing information, then it may be infered that you also share that piece of information.

To give a similar example to that in InsideFacebook‘s article, if you don’t publish details of your education, but enough of your friends have indicated they are all connected to the same academic institution, then it may be infered that you also came from that same institution yourself, and advertisers may target you based on that inference.

All of which sounds teribly clever, and in keeping with the notion that you are defined by the company you keep. However, there are a number of reasons why this approach can only suppress advertising effectiveness if utilised by an advertiser.

Firstly, accuracy.

I won’t for one minute imply that Facebook’s data is not accurate (indeed they would counter that by declaring it is not their data, but that of the user), but maybe, just maybe, the absence of the data is just the start of the story. I can imagine, for example, and to continue the same example, that students of celebrated institutions will *tend* to have a greater propensity to publish their affiliation than those that attend less well known and less envied institutions.

So consequently, and especially when we have developed professional networks that include people from all sorts of backgrounds later in life, the celebrated institutions become, logically, over-represented (if anything). Inference Targeting in this example, then, would only serve to exaggerate that over-representation, and presumably those infered ads *should* work significantly less well (diluting the overall effectiveness substantially). Algorithms to the rescue? Maybe, but not for a while, and not before a lot of mis-attributed inferences had been made (and reported)

Secondly, User-Suspicion.

Even if the inference was accurate, it is easy to acknowledge that an advertisers’ use of data that I haven’t published about myself could “spook” a user – and is unlikely to solicit a positive response. I liken it to the email I got from Alliance & Leicester yesterday, warning me of a security issue and inviting me to reconfirm my details by following their link to the security test area. (I don’t bank with Alliance & Leicester) If I did bank with them though, it is to me clearly a con trick, and I can entirely understand why users might get caught out by it from time to time.

My final offering would be that, users who consciously publish these details will, in part at least, accept that such information may be used to deliver advertising to them. They will have already witnessed it, consciously or not, and will be familiar with its’ occurence. Arguably, they have given expresss permission for others to use that information. Users who have intentionally not published that data then, again at least in part, have specifically chosen not to publish that data, and consquently are likely to be less welcoming of those ads. And from a privacy perspective, this could be dangerous new ground for Facebook to be forging.

There are surely many other reasons why the inference itself may be inaccurate, but there is only very little prospect of better returns for advertisers. The only real purpose for this, then, is to dramatically increase the scale of a prospective campaign, and consequently drive ad revenues up whilst decreasing effectiveness.The same thing happens all the time, and we have seen it time and again, with some direct similies on the way paid-for Search has evolved.

If, or when, it becomes available, buyer-beware. Facebook’s focus on revenue will increasingly pit them against user experience, and this development might see another battle erupt between user and provider.

http://www.youtube.com/tippexperience

A nice enough campaign, but a distinctly similar experience in the main to the subservient chicken, which remains one of my all time favourites. So a decent enough idea, but in no way new or original.

And to execution,  I tried a few things to find that the range of actions / videos available and was disappointed with the 404 error video (and that there’s only one of them), and the frequency with which it appears. The limit on the actions that have been shot is too tight, and the way the word connection occurs is light-weight too. “Plays Twister With” gives me a shot of RoShamBo being played, “shears” gives me nothing, “races” gives me nothing – in fact about half of my suggestions failed to deliver a result.

And what occurred to me most of all by the end of it is that as a campaign, by the end of it, all I actually remembered was the bear and hunter. The product or brand it was meant to be promoting is lost almost immediately as at no point after the intro video does the product itself feature. Burger King’s (TM)  Subservient Chicken was, in my opinion, much better executed and being presented in the guise of a web cam, represented a far better creative treatment.

What is a real shame is that I can’t forward links to the phrases or words that I have used to my friends, so that they can see how clever I am, or that I have “discovered” a funnier, naughtier, clever clip included in the campaign – instead anything I share is back to the top end of the campaign – which really counts against it as far as “social” is concerned.

Of course, the reason for spoofing the YouTube setting is no doubt to somehow claim this is another great success for “social” marketing. I’m old enough to remember when YouTube was the platform of choice for viral marketeers, but something tells me  history will record this as a great triumph for social marketing.