Every day, marketers are discovering new ways to leverage the power of social media. To promote the launch of their new store in Malmö, IKEA turned to one of the most popular features on Facebook…photo tagging. The following video details exactly how it worked. Word-of-mouse marketing is alive and well!

–Greg

The Envision Group has a Facebook page. Visit us and become a fan, if you like what you see. Looking forward to staying connected.

I posted a blog entry on January 18th about the challenge of social media marketing. In it, I claimed that social networks were uncharted territory for advertisers and merchants, because the medium had not been conceived for the purpose of generating revenue.

Behold the naïveté of youth!

My father, an extremely important insurance executive, retired Air Force colonel and inventor of the internet (that’s right, Al Gore), read my blog, and politely pointed out that there had, in fact, been such “uncharted territory” before. Social forums neither motivated by capitalism nor precipitated by commerce HAD previously existed…less than fifty years ago.

Two words: Woodstock.

It was a head-slapping moment. Of course! The music festivals of the sixties and early seventies were cheap, non-commercialized gatherings of like-minded folks, created for the purpose of sharing music, art, ideas and experiences.

Sound familiar? Social networks are just like having super-sized, virtual, slightly-more-sober music festivals at work! Only YOU get to choose everyone who’s there. Love IN, my brothers and sisters!

And what was the fate of the music festival? Did it remain in its first incarnation as an affordable exchange of information and entertainment?

Of course not! It was bludgeoned to death by advertisers and merchants. From its carcass rose a revenue-generating machine, grimly rolling from town to town, swathed in logos, glutted with markups, bearing a greater resemblance to an overpriced swap meet than to a celebration of art.

Only the wealthy and spoiled can afford to attend the so-called festivals any more, much less purchase a bottle of water at the venue. The headliners are all proven-profitable standards, and the tents house up-and-coming studio acts, shoehorned into whichever genre is most popular with the kids that summer.

Where are the protest songs, poets and minstrels? Where are the free speech, free thought, and free water? Well, now they’re all on Twitter! (Except for the water, but I’m sure that’s coming soon.) Social media is every bit as powerful a movement as anything put forth in the Sixties, but with a gazillion times the reach. It makes celebrities out of unremarkable people like Guy Kawasaki and Ana Marie Cox. It played an integral role in getting our president elected, for pete’s sake! Do you think for one second that Capital “B” Business is going to ignore that kind of opportunity for megaphone-on-steroids exposure?

Of course not! And they haven’t. The advertisers and entrepreneurs of the world are chip, chip, chipping away at the pie-eyed purism that spawned social networking. The very creators of Facebook, YouTube and MySpace have all sold their young to corporations who erode their authenticity from the inside out. Sure Crispin Porter + Bogusky got busted for their fake Burger King profile, but how much SPAM now recklessly dilutes, unchecked, the flow of real information and insight online?

Is social media headed for the same bleak destiny as the music festivals of the Sixties? Will idealism and societal evolution be drowned once again in a sea of corporate sponsorship? Is Dave Young correct in declaring that the pendulum is swinging back, and we won’t see this kind of revolution for another forty years?

Fortunately, my dad says, “Probably not.” He knows that social media is in its infancy, and that we have not yet begun to develop its potential applications. There is no reason why, as the social cybersphere is mapped out, that there cannot be room allotted for free exchange of thought and art, as well as venues for marketing and commerce. Each arm must support and, in fact, drive the other. Trade relies on communication. Communication relies on trade.

Instead of bellowing Cassandra-like about the impending demise of social media as we know it at the hands of Capitalism, let us take Woodstock as a cautionary tale, and proceed with greater thought and responsibility as we supplement social networks with social marketplaces. The Twits are counting on us.

—Lisa

I'm an avid Facebook user. Some might even say I'm a bit of an addict. For those of you not on Facebook, it's a social networking site with approximately 160 million active users and serves as a great tool for tracking down old friends and colleagues and easily staying in touch with your network of Facebook users. Among the hundreds of clever and useful (and often not so useful) features, Facebook has thousands of "groups" that were formed by other Facebook users. These groups cover a variety of topics and can be used for everything from reconnecting with your high school graduating class for a reunion to showing support for your favorite college football team.

The group I visit the most is called "I'm in advertising…hell yeah!" It's a gathering place for those of us that are employed in the ad world. Several months ago, a group member started a forum topic where they requested that people share stories about the most bizarre client experiences that they have been a part of. Of course, I can't verify the authenticity of any of these, but some of my favorite accounts are below.

"The budget has been cut. Can you resize the TV spot to fit in a quarter-page print ad?"

"We love the concept, we just want a different headline and a different visual."

"I never said that one of our objectives in building this website was to drive traffic to the site."

Client: I want a TV commercial.
Me: Cool! What's your budget?
Client: Nothing. We have no money. But I still want a commercial.

"No photos of people, people are overrated."

"So…what's on the back of the website?"

"The spot is very nice, we love it. But can we put my girlfriend in it? She would be very happy."

"The internet's a fad, it'll shake itself out."

"The TV commercials are really getting people in the door, but we need to cancel for a few months."

"So you need $100 to get started...Can I pay half now and half when it's done"?

Like every other advertising revolutionary and marketing genius, we here at The Envision Group are dipping our toes into the murky swamp that is Social Media Marketing. And, like everybody else, we know that it is going to be a tricky slog. There are articles and blogs all over the place claiming that advertising on social media sites can’t work, that it won’t work, that it doesn’t work…and they are right.

If you go charging into some dude’s social cyberspace, uninvited, and slap an ad on his profile, he is definitely not going to buy your stuff. He might even proactively tell all of his 900 friends not to buy your stuff, and then update his status to report on how much your stuff sucks. (Of course, being mentioned in someone’s profile status can only increase your visibility, but that’s another topic, and the great likelihood is that your unwelcome ad will just go largely ignored.)

Social networks, like file-sharing sites, are completely uncharted commercial territory for one reason. Their primary function as media formats is NOT to generate revenue. Think about all of the so-called traditional media: television, radio, magazines, billboards. These things were all created to sell products. Actual content was only produced to fill the time and space in between commercials and ads. Theatrical programming, like modern-day stadiums, had names like the Crest Toothpaste Dance Hour and The Chevrolet Comedy Show. “Advertainment," which has seen a resurgence in recent years, dates back to the beginning of broadcast.

Of course, by this reasoning, we should thank advertising for the great strides in magazine journalism and television entertainment in the last century, in the same way that we should thank the Catholic Church for the Renaissance. We have been thanking our sponsors since the Roman Circus. But what happens when a media outlet is born without sponsors? If the format grows without the help of ad dollars? When the entertainment offerings are solely donated user content, and not heavily-financed, star-laden ad bumpers? Well, that’s the sticky wicket.

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook; NewsCorp, which owns MySpace; and Google, the highest bidder for YouTube in 2006, are working day and night trying to figure out how to make a buck off these sites. Selling ad space the old-fashioned way just isn’t working. Advertisers aren’t seeing impressive click-throughs, let alone increased revenues from impressions alone. These major companies are hemorrhaging cash supporting profitless sites, and we just want to blissfully poke each other.

Will it all collapse under the weight of uncompensated server space? Can social media sites survive if no one wants to do business on them? How long will Rupert Murdoch be willing to essentially donate entertainment to the world?

Social network and file-sharing sites are actually evidence of a brand new social phenomenon. There’s an entire study at Yale devoted to researching this new trend. People actually want to give each other things without receiving anything in return, and the internet facilitates that to an unimaginable degree. Everyone is connecting globally, acting locally and giving on a scale previously unseen in human history. Now, an entire family of hugely popular websites has been conceived on these philosophies of giving, sharing, helping and informing. Why on earth would anyone assume that their users would be receptive to sales overtures? The flip side to this love-in of a societal shift might be the death of commerce as we know it.

…But people are still going to buy food, clothes, vehicles, houses, insurance, entertainment, technology, services and tchochkes, so a new kind of commerce must emerge, partnered with a new way to market.

Businesses are going to have to offer something truly real to attract buyers. Gimmicks, loss-leaders and BOGOs are just not going to get the consumers’ attention anymore. There needs to be a charitable donation, interactive game, social involvement, cultural contribution, or any other earnest, tangible reason to chose Brand A over Brand B. The (RED) campaign has been wildly financially successful, and has actually distributed antiretroviral medicines to millions of AIDS sufferers. Burger King continues to grow as CP+B generates one weird, entertaining app after another.

In order to use social media marketing to effectively promote a product, companies must also let go of the concept of immediately quantifiable results from advertising efforts. And although it seems like the antithesis to accelerating lifecycles, patience is a virtue that will really pay off.

It takes time to build an internet presence and foster trust among potential consumers. Successful companies will demonstrate a pattern of social consciousness and position themselves as an invaluable source of information through web and traditional PR initiatives—all the while collecting and cultivating friends and fans on social networks. Buzz will be generated. Interest will be bred. Branding will be tested and solidified. Then, with their target market primed, these companies will be able to introduce their offerings—online as well as in the real world—to a highly receptive buying public.

It’s really not a new concept at all. Spend the time getting the good press, then sell the product. However, there is a new twist to it. If customers are all about sharing with each other, then they are going to demand that the companies they patronize are sharing, too. So what should those companies share? Information. Experiences. Service. These things should no longer be extras, but part of everything that is bought or sold.

As human interactions, and financial transactions become more and more virtual, businesses with the most friends, the most information, and the most worldwide reach will succeed, and it will be they who drive commerce, health, democracy and art. Right now, Facebook, Twitter, and the like seem to be the path that will take us from the Information Age to whatever is next. It’s inexpensive, fun and full of possibilities, so go make some friends already, or get left behind.

—Lisa