SOCIAL MEDIA

As our main theatre-going audience, the over 50s is the fastest growing age group on Facebook in the UK and with digital spend increasing, it won’t be surprising that we will see clients demand more when it comes to social media strategy. Our real test will be going beyond the digital stunts and developing long-term relationships with our audiences. The social network’s revamped insights and reporting has made our lives a lot easier to show how powerful online word-of-mouth can be, but this coupled the fact many clients are less fearless about social media and have become a lot savvier in the process, will quite rightly expect more from the content and strategy we produce as marketers. Thankfully, it’s no longer “How many fans do I have?” but quite rightly, “Are they talking about us?”.

GOOGLE+

With over 10 million members in just two weeks and Facebook’s figures dropping in the U.S. and UK for the first time this year, should Facebook be concerned over the launch of Google+? My feeling is yes, but for a different reason and it’s not about dropping members. Along with online seeding which works so well with Search, Google+ also enhances the ranking of any content. Once clients see the value in this, then we might see an uptake in using this new social network and not just when everyone else seems to adopt it as the norm.

LOCATION BASED SERVICES

Since the launch of Facebook Places, checking into the West End has grown exponentially and The Royal Opera House, London Palladium and the O2 Arena have become some of the most popular locations in London, supporting the theory that being associated with live entertainment venue has more status than perhaps a shop or restaurant. Facebook hasn’t exactly usurped Foursquare’s crown in the US though, even if they have purchased Gowalla recently. Their move into location based deals in the UK hasn’t exactly gained a lot of ground, flexibility and budget are probably the main reason why it’s taken so long to get any traction here in the UK, but with Foursquare’s decision to open a London office next year, this might change. Hopefully the habitual checking-into the West End will grow even further when incentives become widely available and more affordable in the coming months.

MOBILE

My friend recently had his iPhone stolen and freaked out at the thought of basic handset that ‘just made calls’. 23% of all time spent on the internet is on a mobile or ‘cell phone’ and we love our little handsets, they offer the whole world at a single stroke or push of button. Instant purchase is still a fundamental issue though, a song on iTunes takes no effort or forethought to buy, but a ticket to a West End show does. So will we see purchase habits changing? I think we will for last minute discounted or day seats, once people become familiar with making these mobile purchases and ticket agents invest in the technology. We all remember when we preferred to a call number than buy anything on the internet but a 19 year old doesn’t, so it matter of time more than the device we use. So what about Mobile Apps? QR Codes (that funny little Rubik’s Cube barcode) have the advantage of being everywhere now, even in the far reaches of the Tuscan mountains of Italy I found one on the label of a bottle of balsamic vinegar suggesting recipes for me to try. There are other variations like Microsoft Tag or Blippar (which combines augmented reality) but like QR Codes, they need to be downloaded and are not built into your phone like NFC technology (Near Field Communication) which is now appearing in various HTC, Samsung, Nokia and even Blackberry handsets. Lets face it, it’s only a matter of time until Apple announces the iPhone 5 with NFC and it will be commonplace to swipe our phones against a press ad or poster. How we harness it as entertainment marketers will be our challenge, it’s not just a gimmick to showcase a trailer or website – we can data capture, create a competition and more importantly how and where our fans learn about us.

ONLINE SEEDING

Until recently, the theatre industry had only journalists reviewing their shows publicly, now we have bloggers and the ability for anyone to comment and share opinions online. Building relationships with bloggers and news sites is probably the most important thing any producer can invest their money into right now, especially as traditional press reviews have less influence on a theatregoer’s decision to purchase tickets. It requires a real leap of faith to allow these key opinion formers access to your product in order to be a part of their conversation and it will be interesting to see if anyone has the confidence to openly embrace public reviews as part of their social media strategy over the next 12 months. We all want people to talk about our product positively and there’s always the risk they won’t like it, but for us improve on our campaigns and engage with the non-regular theatre-going public who rely on recommendations online, we might want to hear what they have to say.

LOOKING AHEAD…

We can sometimes forget our ‘digital bubble’ takes time to become common place and even though we are the digital advocates and early adopters, it isn’t us who are the ultimate decision makers to what is a success, it’s the public and they can be surprising and very unpredictable. They will decide if Google+ survives or if they want to ‘check-in’ anymore, so let’s see what happens. Have you any thoughts what might take off in 2012?

Did you know there are over 13,000 yellow cabs in NYC?  And over 50,000 drivers?

And guess what the #1 form of transportation is for a tourist in our fair city?

Yep, it’s a taxi.

Since tourists take taxis, and tourists make up the bulk of the Broadway audience, there’s got to be more that we can do inside those vehicles to help get the passengers to Broadway.

The tops of the taxis are covered in ads, and the TVs in the back can be purchased as well (for awhile, it seemed like Disney owned those mini-sets), but what about those 50,000 drivers?

In cities like Las Vegas, where tourists depend heavily on the taxi trade, shows and clubs invite the cabbies to experience their events, just like Broadway shows invite concierges and waiters/waitresses.

We don’t.  Ever.

Why?

Well, because NYC cabbies have a rep.  I mean, come on, my GPS is friendlier than 90% of th

e cab drivers I meet (at least my GPS talks to me, and doesn’t spend the whole ride on the phone).

We’ve made major strides in changing some of the perceptions about NYC over the past twenty years.  The sex shops are gone. The subway is safer.  But we haven’t been able to turn the taxi drivers into mobile concierges just yet.

Best of, Top 10s, etc. are consumer crack when it comes to judging products . . . but at the end of the day, what they are . . . are the “best of” marketing tools.

The Top 40 . . . The New York Times Best Seller list . . . Top Grossing Movies . . . these are all ways of getting out what the most successful products in an industry are, the Top 40 being the most successful because it not only lists the products, it allows you to experience the entire product at the same time.

We’ve got the Broadway grosses in our industry . . . but what’s interesting about this set of numbers is that it’s not a “top” . . . it’s a top and a bottom . . . so it fails to be a marketing tool, like the ingenious Top 40 or the NY Times list.  Even sites that recap weekly grosses like Broadway.com, publish the “underdogs” by gross and capacity (the former not even taking into account the size of the house or the type of show it is).

Do we need a new Top 10?  (I think we’re going to work something like it into BroadwaySpace.com).  Or if we don’t have a new Top 10, should we just be pushing for more publications to list our weekly grosses?  Is there another metric we could use to let consumers know what shows are the most popular that week?  And could we keep them coming back week after week to see the shift?

Whether we like it or not, consumers like to see competition between products in a related industry.  And, if it’s going to be something that will make them follow it for week after week, we should give it to them . . . as long as we don’t have to get Ryan Seacrest to host.

But does that mean you ignore the other 35%?  Certainly not.

We do a pretty good job at trying to get our local butts in seats with traditional marketing efforts like direct mail, email, etc.  And that’s all fine and dandy, but for some reason, I feel like we haven’t shown our locals enough love.

I’m from Sturbridge, MA, home of the infamous Old Sturbridge Village, which is one of those living historical museums set in the 1800s where people walk around saying, “I am the candlemaker,” or “I make cheese.” Anyone from Sturbridge can visit The Village anytime . . . for free.

I worked in Vegas for awhile, and many a casino (especially the ones off the strip . . . which is the Vegas equivalent of Off-Broadway), trumpeted better deals for Locals on food, drinks and more.

Why?  Because while tourists and out-of-towners may be the fuel that fills most of your gross tank, the locals are always around when the tourists run out.  Like, oh, I don’t know . . . September in New York City . . . or January . . . etc.  The toughest times of the year are when our tourists are gone, so shouldn’t we be doing more to get our locals to the theater?

We’ve got some promotions which are aimed at the local market, like 20at20 and Broadway Week, and they do quite well.  But part of me thinks we should be a little more obvious with our gratitude for our local citizens in the branding of these promotions.  There’s a pride that comes from being from “here” (wherever that is) and I think that audience would appreciate a better deal or opportunity than someone from out-of-town.

Because the moment an audience feels like you are paying them respect, they’ll in turn pay you respect . . . by actually paying you.

When I was a kid I collected baseball cards of my favorite players.
When I was a kid I had posters of my favorite movie stars on my walls.
When I was a kid . . . I didn’t know one Broadway star from another.
One of the greatest marketing tools that other industries have made much better use of is the people that make up those industries.  And it’s time we catch up.

We need to do a better job as an industry of promoting the people that do what we do.  And I’m not just talking about the Patti Lupones and the Nathan Lanes of our world . . . I’m talking about everyone on or off a chorus line who performs eight times a week.

We’ve concentrated so hard on marketing theater as a genre, or our shows, as a brand, we might want to flip our strategy a bit and try marketing the people that appear in those brands.  The hope being, of course, that an audience will fall in love with people, and support whatever show they are appearing in (like an athlete that goes from team to team, or an actor that appears in movie after movie).

Wouldn’t Broadway trading cards be cool?  Why not posters of your favorite stars at merch stands or in stores?  A quick search of “Broadway Calendar” on Amazon yielded this result . . . a calendar of Playbill covers, and none of the images are of the people whose names are in those Playbills.

There are some union rules to navigate and press subtleties to work out, but we need to take the hint from our sister industries . . .  pushing people can yield much greater results than pushing a product.

I don’t think there are many marketers on the planet that question the influence and impact that social media has on their customers. If these people do exist, they are either about to change their tune or be extinct as the data clearly highlights continued increases in social media usage among all age ranges.

The question marketers struggle with aren’t with the theory of the potential of social media but in the practice of it. How do I fund it? How do I view performance? Who manages it? How do I “sell it through” to management? What is the decision tree of engagement with customers?

Can we please get past the theory and move the discussion to practice? Can we get rid of these goofy statements that are essentially hollow in substance?

So, as I type away on my train ride to work, let me outline three statements I hope I never hear again.

The consumer is now in control
Really? Yeah, my electric company will really be more responsible in the future since they heard my anger and pain of my power being out for a week after Hurricane Irene. AT&T – yeah, they’ve completely changed their business practices after I have complained a million times over how their reception is no different than the bunny ears on my parents old television set. Yeah, our government really shaped up with the consumers voice of change.

“The consumer is now in control” inherently sounds like a threat and it’s simply not true. Supply and demand are really what’s in control. Smart, successful companies understand this and embrace social media in this context.

Sure, there are stories of consumers having a collective voice of power over brands but let’s not kid ourselves – that is the minority. The fact remains that the consumer is in control of smart brands that want to hear what customers have to say and have the organizational structure to evolve with their customers. This has been true long before Facebook opened its doors for business.

It’s the quality of your social connections, not the quantity
Really? What brand doesn’t want a million followers? I will speak for Marketing Directors all over the globe – quantity matters in the social media discussion (especially getting funding for it)! This is what really stinks about the current popular social networks – your popularity is clear, transparent and easily comparable at the most superficial level. Boards, investors, management teams, donors – they will judge a book by its cover and how can you blame them? They have a million things to worry about in this economy and we all know that when times get tough, numbers shine brighter than ever. A friend and Marketing Director once said to me, “have you ever sat in an hour long presentation about social media statistics with a room full of people you are asking for money who don’t even have a Facebook account?”

Nobody would disagree in theory that quality trumps quantity but the practice of boasting that is much more challenging than most realize when it comes to funding social media in both time and resources. My recommendation (beyond doing what you can to increase your quality follower count) is to create ways to track metrics through social media that are customized to your organization and can be compared across other facets of the budget like cost-per-engagement, impression-to-sale, time-of-engagement and cost-per-acquisition. Frame the conversation away from simply social media follower counts to metrics that can be seen in context with the other marketing initiatives. Aim to get to an apples-to-apples evaluation when possible.

Listening is everything
Really? I am yet to meet a Marketing Director that covered their ears and said “I don’t want to listen to my customers.” Their greatest, rational fear continues to be “how do I act on what I’m learning?” They realize there is a commitment to engagement and a responsibility to act based on what is being heard. This has hard costs, soft costs and political costs that will involve their entire organization. We have clients that have 1,000+ mentions on social media a week – that’s a lot of listening and a lot of corresponding action that is required!

Marketing Directors know that to listen and act may very well may require the hardest thing in the world to implement within their organization – change. The whole concept of change is like a trip to the doctor’s office – painful, expensive and always takes way longer than promised. But, when you’re finished, you feel a lot better for doing it.

Thank you for letting me rant. BTW – I admit, I too have used the above statements many times over the years but today, I promise, no more.

We’re hosting a great event this coming Thursday as part of our EVENTS @ SITUATION SERIES where my rock star social media team and an incredible panel may hit on many of these topics.

Ok, I’m an old bag.

Yep, believe it or not, there is something to be gained from those guidos and guidettes that have four-ways in tequila-filled jacuzzis.

I watched a few minutes of the super-successful show on my descent into LAX last week.  I was horrified, of course, but I was a teensy bit hooked.  Why?

It’s not the stories, it’s not the scenery . . . it’s the Snooki.

Interesting and unique characters are at the core of all successful “shows”, televised or not.  Obviously, you need to avoid spray-tanned caricatures, but at the same time you need to remember why you can’t stop watching shows like this, or movies like The Godfather or plays like Hamlet . . .

These are fascinating people that you don’t meet on every street corner.

So when I sit down and write nowadays and find myself stuck in a boring scene, I repeat this little mantra . . .

You wanna ‘em hooked?  You gotta give ‘em just a bit of Snook.

Here’s an excerpt that I found interesting from the folks at American Express who were quoted in the story. These guys know how to cater to the affluent!

Based upon analysis of the spending habits of Amex affluent card holders, the company announced recently that the luxury market has recovered from the recession, but, he also warned that the make up of today’s post-recession luxury consumer market is very different from that before the recession.

Peter Niessen, vice president of American Express Business Insights said, “There is a new constituent who is driving spending.  We need to speak to traditional consumers, and the new GenX and GenY [also called Millennial] consumers in a way that lets us continue that growth.”

Neissen stresses the need for marketers to target these high-spending young affluents, “There is a whole set of new luxury consumers that we have to acknowledge, recognize and market to.”

I’ll be keeping an eye out for this study and will re-post if I come across the findings.

To learn more about our agency visit our website at www.situationinteractive.com.

What you’ll do:

• Build and manage search engine marketing campaigns in Google and Bing/Yahoo
• Build and manage YouTube and Google Display Network paid campaigns in the Adwords interface
• Prepare performance reports for client presentations
• Present recommendations and key findings to clients based on thorough data analysis and historical trends
• Compile campaign performance reports for agency distribution on a regular schedule
• Manage vendor relationships with Google and Bing/Yahoo
• Liaise with billing and account departments to facilitate process of search campaigns
• Work with a search trafficker to successfully update and optimize campaigns
• Keep abreast of online media trends

What you’ll need:

• A minimum of 2-3 years of search engine marketing experience
• Google Adwords Certification
• Mastery of the full suite of products in the Google Adwords interface including advanced applications such as Conversion Tools, Enhanced CPC, Extensions, YouTube products, etc.
• Thorough knowledge of the Bing/Yahoo interface
• An analytical mindset driven by the desire to dig through data to make campaigns the best they can be
• Meticulous attention to detail
• Excellent presentation and communication skills
• A complete knowledge of interactive marketing concepts and practices as well as a familiarity with offline media concepts
• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint
• Superior time management and organizational skills
• Prior knowledge of Doubleclick search and Google Analytics preferred
• Basic SEO knowledge a plus

This is a full-time, on-site position offering 401k and health benefits.