Donna's Promo Talk

Social Media Campaign Works to Raise Awareness of Violence Against Women

Today was again my day to guest blog over at Lipsticking.com. I took the opportunity to write a follow-up on the The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and their Say NO To Violence Against Women. I'm a bit disappointed with the initial response that I received to support this cause from both blogs, so I'm trying again.

In my new post on Lipsticking I have included some exclusive videos of Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman speaking about the campaign. We only have a couple of weeks left for them to meet their goal. So, RocketXL, the social media agency working on this campaign, is really pushing to get this message spread through the blogoshphere and via social networks. So please check out this post and add your voice today to this cause. Here's the widget again.

Join The Cause to Help Violence Against Women

Since I launched this blog almost two years ago I've written several posts about Dove's Campaign For Real Beauty in an effort to help spread their positive self-esteem messages. One of the social media marketing firms that has helped Dove get this message out to us bloggers and into the social media word is RocketXL. I was recently honored when they contacted me about a totally new initiative that they're supporting that also involves empowering women.

So I couldn't help but utilize this blog as well as my guest blogging privileges on Lipsticking.com to help spread this message. Please visit my Lipsticking.com post to read about  The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and their Say NO To Violence Against Women which is the new movement that RocketXL is now working with. You can join this movement by just simply adding your signature to the widget found below.

Looking Forward to PMA's Digital Marketing Summit

Next week I'll be heading down to New York City to attend PMA's first annual Digital Marketing Summit. I'm looking forward to it since I haven't been to any type of conference or workshop since last April when I attended PMA's Annual Integrated Marketing Conference in Chicago which I thought was great.

This conference titled, Digital Marketing Fully Integrated, brings together the country's leading digital marketers including Advertising Age's top 3 “Digital Marketers of the Year” that include Unilever, AKQA and Google, plus Promo's 2008 Agency of the Year, Digitas, which I wrote about here. It's being held at Bridgewaters at the South Street Seaport on Monday, September 8th.

The Olympic Games Have Begun - Are you Watching?

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games got off to a spectacular start.  I stayed up till midnight on Friday night to see the end of the recorded version of the opening ceremonies that NBC broadcast. It was really cool the way they lifted Li Ning, former Olympic gymnast for China, to the top of the Beijing National Stadium ("The Birds Nest") and had him appear to be running on air with the Olympic torch to light the cauldron. 

It appears that the opening ceremonies that the Chinese hosted for the world were the most spectacular to date and included an amazing blend of human talent combined with technology. I found it really hard to pull away from watching the event on TV...even the commercials. While the Olympic Opening Ceremony normally doesn't receive the same hype for TV ads as the Super Bowl does, there were some really great ads that ran during the broadcast.

One of my favorite ads was from McDonald's featuring children's soccer. It didn't have any words, just a musical score with very strong expressions coming from the "losing team" and well as the "winning team".  It showed how the kids' expressions changed dramatically once the food showed up... for the losing team of course. It reminded me of when my daughters were young and going to McDonald's was such a treat. In fact one of my daughter's first words were "french fries" (which actually sounded like "fra-fras") and she would yell that out whenever we passed the Golden Arches.

I'm looking forward to watching some of the events tonight. I read that the U.S. already got it's first Gold Medal - in Fencing. The time difference is a little confusing. We'll get to watch some live meets tonight, Saturday evening, which are actually taking place Sunday morning in Beijing. That's why it's so important to be able to watch what you want, when you want. NBC is scheduled to have over 2.200 hours of event coverage online this year. That's pretty cool, even though there has been some criticism for not giving viewers more choice. Check out this article from Silicon Alley Insider that lists some of the ways NBC could have really utilized Web 2.0 in their strategy.

Another interesting bit of research that I read in this Adotas article is that teens are not that into the Games. I have two teenager daughters who are so busy with what's going in their own lives that they really don't appear interested at all in the Olympics. They may have been more I think if Abby Wambach was there playing with the U.S. Soccer Team. Abby is a graduate of Our Lady of Mercy High School here in Rochester, where both my girls are from. The team did pretty well without Abby today. The study on teens was done by Harris Interactive which states that less than half, 43%, expressed any interest in the Olympics.

I've also been trying to keep up with Jenny and Tom who are blogging on Kodak's blog, A Thousand Words, from Beijing. I've also been able to follow Jenny on Twitter. It appears to be an experience of a lifetime for her so far. She writes in her first post from Beijing about how "tall" she thought all the Chinese women were until she noticed the platform shoes they wear. Jenny took this photo of the shoes along with some other great photos of the Opening Ceremonies you just have to check out.

Well I just have to admit that these Olympic Games have brought back for me at least a sense of patriotism and if anything helps make the world seem like a smaller place. I've learned so much already about China and its people. It's hard to comprehend how big of a country it is ....over 1.3 billion people living in a country on the other side of the world from us Americans. Hopefully we'll get to know them and they'll get to know us a little better. Now wouldn't that be be a great result of these games?

Web 2.0 and the Beijing Olympic Games

Today's Wednesday and that means I'm again a guest blogger over at Lipsticking.com.  So, please follow this link and read my latest post that talks about how some Web 2.0 strategies are being integrated with a couple of Olympic marketing efforts.

With only ten days left till the Opening Ceremonies, the excitement is really starting to build. But could NBC be doing more to attract an online audience and will you will following the games online or on TV?

I'm hoping to get some discussion going on over at Lipsticking. So I invite you follow me and discussion over there.

Another Study Claims Social Media is Mainstream

Today I read this post on Media Post's Online Media Daily newsletter regarding results of the latest installment of an ongoing tracking study from Interpublic's Universal McCann "Media in Mind" study. It states that "text messaging, blogging and social networking have reached critical mass, with more than half of adults now relying on at least one of these so-called Web 2.0 platforms for communicating with friends, family, or colleagues on a regular basis".

It appears that study after study is now telling us that that the world has moved on in the ways of traditional marketing communications and "Web 2.0" is here to stay. Just a couple of weeks ago I wrote this post about the BlogHer Study which states that blogging is mainstream among women. Last month I wrote this post about the Borrell Associates study which states that online promotions is expected to triple over the next five years and my guess is that social media will be fueling that growth. So, I don't think it will be long before "Web 3.0", or "Wave 3" now as they're referring to it, is what we'll be reading about from now on.

I do find this new report very interesting and I haven't had a chance to review the full copy of UM's white paper so for now I'm just going to recap Media Post's article which follows here:

Among adults 18-34 they have found that social media now is the dominant form of personal communication media, with 85% of this influential demographic group relying on one or more Web 2.0 platforms to stay in touch with others.

"Although age is the driving force behind usage patterns of these technologies, it is clear that a fundamental shift has taken place in all of our lives about what it means to communicate in the 21st Century," the agency says in a new white paper based on the research.

And it's not just newer forms of Web-based communications that people are relying more on. Even "old school" methods such as email and instant messaging are continuing to displace other forms of analog communication. The percentage of U.S. adults who said they now rely on instant messaging, for example, rose to 22% this year from just 9% in 2007. Among 18- to 34-year-olds, IM dependent crowd grew to 21% from 14% a year ago.

Text messaging, meanwhile, proves that mobile media also is becoming a dominant source of personal communications beyond the cell phone, even if mass marketers haven't yet figured out how to crack the potential of marketing through the medium. The percentage of U.S. adults who say they've never sent a text message fell to 41% this year from 49% a year ago. And among 18- to 34-year-olds, it dropped to 22% from 38%.

"We're definitely seeing continual shifts," says Graeme Hutton, senior vice president-director of consumer insights at UM, and the chief curator of the agency's highly regarded Media in Mind research. "The great unwashed - those people who have never sent a text message - is getting smaller all the time."

One of the more fascinating parts of the UM research is the speed with which the average American is becoming a self-publisher on the Internet. One out of 10 U.S. adults now publish blogs, up from just 5% a year ago. Among 18- to 34-year-olds, the rate is twice that, with one out of five publishing blogs, up from 10% a year ago.

And who's reading all this blog materials? Well, according to UM, everyone. The percentage of Americans of all demographic groups who say they now read a blog everyday soared between 2007 and 2008, and UM's Hutton attributed this to the rapid rise of another Web 2.0 platform: social networks.

"We think that's do to the increased use of social networking, and blogs are an integral part of using them," he explains. "Two years ago, asking people about blogs, people were shaking their heads. I think now it's taking off because social networks are taking off. RSS feeds, which make reading blogs easier, have become an integral part of the way people communicate and exchange content. People may have been doing it before, but may not have realized it. Now they're recognizing it for what it is."

House Party Combines Social Events with Social Media

Today I am again the guest blogger over at Lip-sticking.com, which I've now comfortably fell into the every other Wednesday slot. I recently learned about this pretty interesting promotion that The Hershey Co. did by working with a new marketing services firm called House Party. They developed and managed the Hershey's Bliss Chocolate Party which took place in 10,200 homes back in April.

I thought this was a really cool marketing concept and felt the Lipsticking network would appreciate reading about it since marketing to women appears to be it's key focus. So I invite you to please hop on over there and read my post and learn how chocolate, tequila and TNT are integrating social events with social media to engage a huge market of consumers.

Bombay Sapphire Integrates Online Contest and Blogs

Now that I've been blogging here for almost a year and a half about interactive promotions I've made the list of a few PR firms who have been sending me information about their clients' latest promotions. Most of them I have found interesting and try and write about. This one I received from the folks over at Terpin Communications that I just couldn't pass up for a few good reasons: 1) They have an awesome promotional website 2) They've got a separate contest just for us bloggers! 3) I love a good Bombay Sapphire Martini!

Bombay Sapphire's "The Spirit of Exploration" contest is sending a lucky winner on a trip to the Sky Bar in Bangkok, Thailand! Once you get through the regulatory website pages and tell them your birth date and country you're told that "the most extraordinary brand introduces an interactive experience like no other". You're then greeted by the bartender of the Sky Bar, an exotic spot located on top of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel, the second tallest building in Bangkok.

To enter the contest, consumers need to write a 50 word essay saying "What the Spirit of Exploration means to them". They may also include photographs and/or videos to go along with their essay or insert a link to their Flickr, MySpace, Facebook page that contains them. A panel of judges will review all the entries and choose a winner based on the persuasiveness of the entry, their ability to communicate their explorative spirit and their relevance to Bombay Sapphire. Entries are accepted up till July 15th.

The grand prize winner receives a 7-day trip to Bangkok along with some tours and an English-speaking sightseeing guide. The winner get to fly on Cathay Pacific airlines either out of New York's JFK airport, Los Angeles' LAX or San Fransisco however, they need to find their own way to one of those airports on their own expense. Either way, the trip is valued at $8,000, so it's worth it.

Now the Spirit of Exploration blogger's contest is asking for blog posts that focus on the same question of what the spirit of exploration means to you. So, that's not really what I'm writing about here. I guess I'll have to come back to it and write about it in a different post if I want a shot at this. But what's really cool about what they've done here is created a blog in which they're generating content for it by the promotion itself. You can read all the posts that have been submitted (and accepted) and then vote for which one you think should get the title of "the Spirit of Exploration Blogger"!

The bloggers can't win the trip to Bangkok just by posting, but they can take their blog post and also enter it as an essay in the contest. Each blogger can submit a link to their actual blog which gets added to the Bombay Sapphire blogroll. They also supply the blogger with a downloadable badge that they can place on their own blog which invites their readers to vote for them. I counted 11 posts on the blog as of today. Soon to come will be a Sapphire Explores Community on Facebook that I guess they don't have up yet.

So, if you read my previous post here on the reported growth online promotions will be experiencing in the next five years I also did my own forecasting. I stated that integrating social media, especially blogs, with interactive promotions is one of the ways in which I think this growth is going to happen. The Bombay Sapphire promotion is a great example of how they've brought the two mediums together. Stay tuned for my Spirit of Exploration post. I really want that martini now!

BlogHer Study Shows Blogging is Mainstream Among Women

I was reading my daily AdAge MediaWorks newsletter yesterday and there was a mention in their 3 Minute Ad Age Video about a new report on the demographics of female blogging. So I clicked on the video and got to hear a one minute highlight about the report, however I first had to listen to a review of CBS's new series, Swingtown, about sex, drugs in suburbia 1970's that apparently media buyers really love so far, and then finishing with another one minute report telling me that Kellogg's Hydrox cookies are back and taking on Nabisco's Oreo cookies. A very strange combination of topics, wouldn't you say?

What I did find out is that the blogging report was conducted by my friends over at BlogHer, so I hopped over to their site and found the report myself. BlogHer conducted this study with Compass Partners, a consumer-research consultancy, and originally released some of the results at the BlogHer Business Conference back in March that I had wanted to attend, but was not able to. The overall message that the report shows is that blogging has now become mainstream among women.

The study was based on surveys of two sample groups which together included several thousand respondents: one composed of participants in the BlogHer community and the other of online women selected to represent the general population of U.S. women, age 18-75. The numbers showed that more than one third of women in the U.S., 36.2 million, participate in the blogosphere weekly. Of those women, nearly 42%, 15.1 million, are publishing at least one post weekly and slightly over 58%, 21.1 million women, are reading and/or posting. Those are pretty impressive numbers.

Now I currently believe that the average age of women online in the blogosphere falls in the range of young mothers and this study justifies that. Here's a chart that shows the age breakdowns as well how much each group is publishing vs. reading. Also not surprising is that 68% of the BlogHer community is concentrated in the 25-41 age group while only 42% of the general population fall here, but still the largest percentage.

St. Ives Elements Promotion - Books, Blogs and Beyond Conference

Today I'm the featured guest blogger over at Lip-sticking.com, a blog about marketing to women online. I've mentioned Lip-sticking here quite a few times before. I started my official role as a Lipsticking blogger last month and now hope to write a post there about every other week. My good friend Yvonne DiVita has invited me, along with three other women, to blog on it, so the five us make up a pretty diverse team.

I'm planning to also write my posts on Lip-sticking about interactive promotions but they'll be more focused on promotions that are targeted to women. Today's post here is about the interactive promotional campaign that Alberto Culver's St. Ives brand developed to help launch their new skincare line, St. Ives Elements. You just have to check out the interactive website, GetAHappyFace.com, that they developed which takes the campaign totally online.

Also I wanted to mention here that I'm working with Yvonne and the team from her company, Windsor Media Enterprises, on the development of a conference on Books, Blogs and Beyond - what we're calling Publishing 3.0. We have created a survey to help us get some initial feedback and have sent it out through some email messages to those friends and acquaintances who are business professionals and have either written a book, expressed the idea of wanting to write a book, or have mentioned that they have friends and colleagues who are writing or want to write a book. Some of also are bloggers, others are not - yet.

So, I thought I’d also include the survey link here on my blog and ask those of you who may be interested to take about 10 minutes to complete it. Please feel free to share with anyone you know that may also be interested. Yvonne is also putting this survey link up on Lip-sticking as well as some of her other blogs and including Twitter as well. The more input we can get, the better. Thanks for your input.