We Can't Fully Leverage Social Media Until Brands, Media Buyers, and PR Learn to Play in the Sandbox Together - Jory Des Jardins - MediaBizBlogger

Originally published November 6 2008While everyone in my world has concerns about future spending in the digital media space I worry even more about how budgets are being spent on social media In my experience working on campaigns engaging bloggers with brands PR agencies and media buyers I39ve seen a siphoning away of wellintended dollars due to redundancies miscommunication and lack of alignment among these marketing groups In many cases they haven39t yet found ways to coordinate their efforts in social media contexts and so they don39t always achieve the best outcome This could hurt the industry more than the economy could because it gives social media a bad rap as unaccountable and ineffectiveDon39t get me wrong we39ve seen great things happen but when they do it is inevitably a result of PR media or a brand extending their responsibilities beyond their usual scope In a review campaign created for JC Penney39s new furniture line Linden Street my company engaged bloggers to review the new line by providing them with gift cards for shopping excursions The bloggers then wrote balanced reviews of their experiences and those posts were promoted via media Now blogger outreach is typically done through a PR agency but in this case the recruiting was done by us and planned with the media agency who allocated budget for the promotion of the reviewsIn other instances PR firms such as Ogilvy Edelman and Weber Shandwick have allocated portions of their budgets to media impressions we could run on our blog advertising network Now PR firms typically don39t get media budgets but increasingly we39re seeing firms build this into their budgets or PR firms are working with a brand39s media buyer to enhance the reach of their efforts As they say does an amazing PR campaign really happen if few blog about it Well as I like to say anyway These quotnontraditionalquot campaigns are leading the way to real innovation both in terms of social media marketing and interagency collaboration but such collaboration or crosspollination if you will typically doesn39t happenLet me be specific about what doesn39t work by using a typical scenario A corporate brand manager is keen to market her product to a targeted social networking community She encourages her PR firm and her media agency to begin engaging that community The PR firm initiates a blogger outreach program the media buyer includes specific social media properties or ad networks in the RFP process but never shall these efforts be coordinated with each other amp160I39m encouraged when I see brand PR and media teams banding together and building on each other39s efforts Do I have the magic formula for how this can work from within these organizations For how these people can avoid tripping over each other Nope I can only tell you that when this coordination happens it tends to workSeveral years ago I cooked up a crossmarketing fantasy that I still hope to help a customer achieve I was speaking with a buyer for a packaged food company that wanted to engage both mom and food bloggers and I suggested a recipe contest With a media buy we could easily promote the contest across blogs that were relevant in the space I told the client but I warned of two things 1 You need to allow dollarson the media andor PR sideto promote the winner The blogosphere wants to see the end of the story not sharing or allowing others in the community to talk about the winning recipe is dropping the campaign before it has a chance to really take off And 2 You need a really good prizeWhen the firm suggested a simple cash prize I said no suggesting instead that quotit would be great to promote the winning blogger39s recipe offline say on the packagingquotThe suggestion was wellreceived but given that it was 2006 and we were talking about this questionable entity called the Blogosphere and the media budget couldn39t extend past X date and such groups as the PR agency and brand operations would have to be called into play the idea was placed in proposal purgatoryStill a girl can dream amp8230The PR account manager promotes her branding effort by relying on a relatively inefficient process of reaching out to individual bloggers posting and responding to posts on community networks and hoping that influencers will adopt and ultimately write about the product Eventually the PR manager may see that the only real way to effectively promote her branding effort is to achieve more scalable reach across the targeted communityon the social media site or across relevant blogs in that community but she doesn39t have the media dollars to do that with scaleMeanwhile the media buyer is able to broadcast messaging out to millions of relevant members of his target demo but not with any real engagement He would love to tie in his program to an event or something that will trigger real interaction maybe even generate a coveted comment or product recommendation on Twitter But all he has are media impressions and maybe a short call to action to prove a message was received Anything additional is unlikely and frankly not part of the required metrics even if it means exponentially more than a clickthruThe brand manager can see that her PR firm could use media budget to support and promote an engaging outreach program She also sees that enabling the media buyer by expanding the definition of measurables to include blog posts comments Flickr uploads Facebook groups YouTube videos Seesmic responses and Tweets while not tying into a nice neat metrics package do indicate engagement But her management is still demanding traditional measurable outcomes and she only has budget for specific quotoneoffquot product initiatives like a launch not ongoing engagement She39d love to coordinate with other brand groups to build a sustained effort but the timing of her initiative doesn39t match those of her colleagues and they have a totally different strategy anyway

Become a Thought Leader. Share your thought leadership article with industry professionals & have them archived in Thought Leadership

We Can't Fully Leverage Social Media Until Brands, Media Buyers, and PR Learn to Play in the Sandbox Together - Jory Des Jardins - MediaBizBlogger

Publish date

Channel

"About That with Carl Mayer:" Alaina Donnellon (Episode 10: Political Spending) - By Carl Mayer

More Videos:

Become a Thought Leader. Share your thought leadership article with industry professionals & have them archived in Thought Leadership

We Can't Fully Leverage Social Media Until Brands, Media Buyers, and PR Learn to Play in the Sandbox Together - Jory Des Jardins - MediaBizBlogger

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

"About That with Carl Mayer:" Alaina Donnellon (Episode 10: Political Spending) - By Carl Mayer

The payment was successful

Cookies